The new entrant in the Indian telecom sector, Reliance Jio is continuing its disruptive expansion. According to the latest Telecom Subscription Data as on 31st December 2017 published by TRAI, Jio was able to add a whopping 8.01 million new subscribers to its 4G only network.
When we compare this massive subscriber addition by Jio to other established telcos, Idea was only able to add around 2.4 million subscribers in the month. Whereas, Vodafone India managed to grab 1.5 million new subscribers. However India’s top telco Artel only able to add mere 5.7 lakh new subscribers to its network in December 2017. State-run telco BSNL was also able to expand itself with 4.2 lakhs new subscribers in the month.
Stats on Telecom Subscription (December 2017)
- The number of Telephone subscribers in India increased to 1,190.67 million.
- The total wireless subscriber which also includes GSM, CDMA and LTE subscribers in the country increased to 1,167.44 million.
- Private telecom operators hold 90.46 percent market share in Indian telecom sector. Whereas the two PSU telecom operators BSNL and MTNL hold just 9.55 percent market share.
- Reliance Jio added the maximum number of subscribers to its network, followed by Idea Cellular, Vodafone India, Airtel and BSNL.
- On the losing side, Aircel topped the chart followed by RCom, Telenor and Tata Teleservices.
- Out of the total wireless subscribers, only 1,015.52 million wireless subscribers were active on the date of peak VLR in the month of December 2017. The proportion of active wireless subscribers was approximately 86.99 percent of the total wireless subscriber base.
- Airtel retained the top position in India telecom sector with 24.85 percent market share. Followed by Vodafone India with 18.20 percent market share and Idea Cellular with 16.83 percent market share.
- Wireline subscriber base declined further to 23.23 million in December 2017. BSNL top’s the wireline segment with 53.50 percent market share, followed by Airtel with 16.84 percent market share.
- Mobile number portability (MNP) requests counted to a total of 7.43 million in December 2017. The highest number of MNP requests till date have been received in Karnataka telecom circle.
Stats on Indian Broadband (December 2017)
- The number of broadband subscribers, which include both mobile and wired subscribers increased to 362.87 million at the end of December 2017.
- Reliance Jio tops the chart in data market in the country with 160.09 million subscribers. Airtel takes the second spot with 71.09 million data subscribers.
- On wired broadband connections, BSNL tops with 9.38 million subscribers. On the second spot, we have Airtel Broadband with 2.15 million subscribers.
- Again, in the Wireless broadband service providers ranking list (based on the number of subscribers) Reliance Jio tops the chart, followed by Airtel and Vodafone India.