Telecom subscriber base grew marginally by 0.2% to 1191 million with only Reliance Jio adding new customers, according to the data released by sector regulator Trai for September 2018. "The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,189.08 million at the end of August 2018 to 1,191.40 million at the end of September 2018, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.2%," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India report said. Mobile or wireless subscriber base in the country increased by 0.21% to 1169 million in September from 1166.9 million. During the month, Vodafone Idea Limited has lost over eight million subscribers which is a huge loss for the newly formed telco.
Reliance Jio was the only telecom operator that gained mobile subscribers while all other operators showed a decline in their customer base. Mukesh Ambani-led firm added over 13 million mobile subscribers taking its total customer base to 252 Million. As Jio reported back in October this year, the telco's subscriber base has surpassed 250 million in just 19 months after opening the service to the public.
Vodafone Idea was biggest loser in September. The company lost over eight million mobile customers. Vodafone and Idea subscribers numbers for September month were reported separately. On the flip side, Bharti Airtel lost 2.3 million mobile customers, Tata Teleservices one million, BSNL 5.36 lakh, followed by Reliance Communications 16,349 and MTNL 9435, as reported by PTI.
While landline segment continued to decline with BSNL losing 71,800 customers, Bharti Airtel gained 16929 customers in fixed line segment and Vodafone added 7080 new fixed line connections. Broadband subscriber base increased by 3.89% to 48.1 crore.
"Top five service providers constituted 97.86% market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of Sep-18. These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (252.25 million), Bharti Airtel (99.29 million), Vodafone (51.82 million), Idea Cellular (47.90 million) and BSNL (20.12 million)," Trai said.
It will be interesting to see how the subscriber addition goes in the future. With all the current changes made by Airtel and Vodafone Idea, we're expecting subscribers to port out from the networks and join BSNL in a big number. BSNL' subscriber base is likely to go up in this quarter.
