The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) noted that the total wired broadband subscribers in India have declined from 18.42 million in March 2019 to 18.41 million in April 2019. This has been a 0.04% drop in the number of wired broadband subscribers in the country. As per the data compiled by the telecom regulator, the top five wired broadband providers were BSNL (9.15 million), Bharti Airtel (2.38 million), Atria Convergence Technologies (1.43 million), Hathway Cable and Datacom (0.82 million) and MTNL (0.75 million). The report which was received by the telecom regulator at the end of April month from 317 operators stated that the number of broadband subscribers went up from 563.31 million at the end of Mar-19 to 571.95 million at the end of Apr-19 with a monthly growth rate of 1.53%.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Boasting of 314.81 Million Subscribers Currently
What’s crucial to note is that the data highlighted that the top five broadband providers constituted 98.68% market share of the total broadband market at the end of April 2019. These top five service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (314.81 million), Bharti Airtel (115.71 million), Vodafone Idea (109.66 million), BSNL (22.29 million) and Tata Tele. Group (1.94 million). This data was for both wired and wireless broadband connection, for the wireless broadband market the top five service providers included The top five Wireless Broadband Service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd with 314.81 million subscribers, Bharti Airtel with 113.33 million subscribers, Vodafone Idea with 109.64 million subscribers, BSNL with 12.39 million subscribers and Tata Teleservices with 1.54 million subscribers.
The interesting part about the data is that in March when Trai had compiled the report for the number of wired broadband subscribers, the number of subscribers had shot up from 18.29 million subscribers in February to 18.42 in only a month. As for both wired and wireless broadband subscribers, the numbers had increased by 2.37% to 563.31 million from 550.24 million, including both wired and wireless verticals.
Trai to Bring Rules to Regulate Wired Broadband Testing
Apart from the new report compiled by the telecom regulator about the wired broadband sector, there has been more development in the industry regarding the industry. It is worth noting that the days before the launch of Reliance Jio GigaFiber have forced the sector regulator to ponder about the issues which the industry is currently facing right now. Similar to the network testing rules which exist for the wireless broadband service providers, the telecom regulator plans to put in place rules for the wired broadband service provider. Currently, Trai is planning to float a consultation paper which would take six months to materialise. The new laws would likely be put in place before the launch of Reliance Jio’s GigaFiber fibre broadband service, thus putting it under the direct scrutiny of the regulator.
