For six straight months, Bharti Airtel has been adding maximum quantity of wireless subscribers. In January, Airtel added 5.89 million clients to take its user base to 344.60 million, according to information shared by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
Reliance Jio followed with additions of 1.96 million in January to enhance its base to 410.73 million. Interestingly, Vodafone Idea, also, added wireless subscribers in the month with 1.71 million clients onboarding its network. The corporation has been regularly losing subscribers more than the previous a lot of months but it has now managed to quit the outflow. The wireless user base of Vodafone Idea stood at 285.96 million at the finish of the reported month. State-run BSNL also managed to add 81,659 subscribers to take its user base to 118.69 million. With sturdy additions, Airtel has been narrowing down the gap with market place leader Reliance Jio, which has noticed its subscriber additions slowing down.
Despite adding wireless subscribers in January, Jio’s subscriber market place share was down marginally to 35.30% in the month, compared to 35.43% in December. Airtel’s share rose to 29.62% in January from 29.36% in December. Vodafone Idea also lost market place share in spite of adding clients. The company’s share stood at 24.58% in January as compared to 24.64% in December. In terms of wireless broadband customers (4G), Jio’s base stood at 410.73 million, followed by Airtel at 181.73 million, Vodafone Idea at 122.71 million. Competition for 4G customers is heating up as mobile operators attempt to add customers and upgrade user subscription. Currently, there are about 300 million 2G customers, mainly on the networks of Airtel, BSNL and Vodafone Idea, who are up for grabs. Reliance Jio has currently announced a new JioPhone present to grab the 2G customers. The corporation is providing a JioPhone for Rs 1,999, which comes with 24 months of limitless service. Another program is for Rs 1,499, which comes with 12 months of limitless service.
Airtel is upgrading a lot of of its 2G customers to 4G by supplying profitable tariff plans. As there is so a lot client movement, the MNP requests have been regularly higher for the previous couple of months. The MNP requests stood at 7.63 million in January. In terms of wireline broadband subscribers, Reliance Jio has been adding the maximum quantity of customers, mainly due to the rollout of its fibre connectivity across the nation. Jio added about 180,000 wireline broadband customers in January followed by 90,000 by Airtel. BSNL lost 10,000 wireline broadband customers.
As on January, the wireline broadband base of BSNL stood at 7.69 million, followed by 2.90 million of Airtel, 2.25 million of Reliance Jio, 1.80 million of ACT and 1.06 million of Hathway Cable.