India’s telecom user base edges up to 119.2 crore in October

New Delhi: Only two operators—Reliance Jio and state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL)—gained new subscribers in October, leading to a marginal growth in overall telecom user base to 119.2 crore, according to Trai data released Wednesday. Reliance Jio and BSNL jointly added over 1.08 crore new mobile phone customers, while rest of the operators—Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtlel, Tata Teleservices, MTNL and Reliance Communications—lost more than 1.01 crore customers. Reliance Jio alone added over 1 crore and BSNL added 3.66 lakh customers.

“Virtual Network Operator (VNO) of BSNL has started reporting of its subscribers in the month of October 2018 and the same has been included in the subscriber number of BSNL,” the report said. Vodafone Idea lost 73.61 lakh mobile subscribers, Airtel 18.64 lakh, Tata Teleservices lost 9.25 lakh, MTNL 8,068 and RCom 3,831 customers.
Mobile telephony dominates the Indian telecom market with 98% market share.

The number of telephone subscribers in the country increased to 119.2 crore in October from 119.14 crore in September, according to subscriber data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). Mobile phone segment grew to 117 crore in October from 116.92 crore in September while the wireline subscriber base declined to 2.2 crore from 2.21 crore during the period under review.
Decline in wireline base was mainly due to BSNL, which lost 85,200 fixedline customers, followed by RCom (14,120), MTNL (8,684), Tata Teleservices (3,398) and Quadrant (3092). Airtel and Vodafone gained 16,340 and 8,894 wireline customers, respectively, in October.
The number of broadband customers of 306 service providers increased by around 3% to 49.61 crore in October from 48.17 crore in September. Top five service providers constituted 98.42% market share of the total broadband subscribers in October. “These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (26.27 crore), Airtel (10.13 crore), Vodafone Idea (10.13 crore), BSNL (2.03 crore) and Tata Tele Group (25 lakh),” the report said.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.

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