Reliance Jio has added a whopping 9.6 million subscribers during the month of April 2018, which takes the overall subscriber base of the telco to 196.2 million and is inching towards the 200 million subscriber base. During the same period, Idea Cellular has added 5.5 million new subscribers, followed by Bharti Airtel with 4.5 million new additions. State-run PSU, BSNL added over seven lakh new customers during the same period, while surprisingly, Vodafone lost more than 6.6 lakh subscribers during April 2018. As per the data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), Reliance Jio now has 17.44% subscriber market share, while Airtel is still leading the chart with 27.44% share. Idea Cellular will soon become the country' second largest operator because as of April 2018, it had a market share of 19.27%, which is very much close to that of Vodafone's 19.74%. BSNL is on the verge of securing 10% market share as it ended the month with 9.99% share.
Coming to other operators, MTNL lost 12,167 subscribers, while Telenor and Tata Teleservices lost 1.8 million and 2 million subscribers respectively. Furthermore, Trai has stated that Aircel did not report its subscriber base for April 2018 due to the closure of services. As on April 30, 2018, the private telecom service providers held 89.70% market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU access service providers, had a market share of only 10.30%.
The Monthly Subscription Report from Trai also revealed that the number of telephone subscribers in India declined from 1,206.22 million at the end of March 2018 to 1,147.71 million at the end of April 2018, thereby showing a monthly decline rate of 4.85%.
The urban subscription declined from 681.61 million to 643.87 million, and the rural subscription also declined from 524.61 million to 503.84 million during the same period. The monthly growth rates of urban and rural subscription were -5.97% and -3.38% respectively during the month of April 2018. Aircel must have lost a large chunk of subscribers due to the closure of services in all the circles at the end of February 2018.
Coming to the total wireless subscribers (GSM, CDMA & LTE), the user base declined from 1,183.41 million to 1,125.07 million, thereby registering a monthly decline rate of 4.93%.
