Reliance Jio, BSNL added over 8 million subscribers in April

Reliance Jio and BSNL’s growth was mitigated by loss of customers by Bharti Airtel, Tata Teleservices, Vodafone Idea, public sector telecom firm MTNL and Reliance Communications (RCom).

Customers buying Reliance Jio sims at a Reliance Digital centre in Mumbai. (Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint)

The country's telecom subscriber base grew marginally to 1,183.77 million in April on account of net mobile customers gain by Reliance Jio and state-run telecom firm BSNL, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) report released Monday.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India slightly increased from 1,183.51 million at the end of March 2019 to 1,183.77 million at the end of April 2019, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.02 per cent," TRAI said in subscriber report for April.

Wireless subscribers grew by about half a million to 1,162.30 million in April from 1,161.81 million in March. Though Reliance Jio and BSNL jointly added over 8.31 million customers, the growth was mitigated by loss of customers by Bharti Airtel, Tata Teleservices, Vodafone Idea, public sector telecom firm MTNL and Reliance Communications (RCom).

Jio led the market by adding over eight million customers alone taking its total subscriber base to 314.8 million. BSNL followed Jio by adding 2,32,487 new mobile customers taking its total mobile customer base to 115.89 million.

Bharti Airtel lost 3.28 million mobile customers, Tata Teleservices 2.95 million, Vodafone Idea 1.58 million, MTNL 4,170 subscribers and RCom 108 customers. The landline subscriber base further declined to 21.47 million in April, from 21.70 million in March with BSNL 2,27,596 customers.

Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea gained 36,686 and 8,829 wireline customers during the month. The number of broadband subscribers increased 1.53% to 571.95 million in April from 563.31 million in March with mobile devices accounting for over 96% of total connections.

Out of 317 broadband service providers, top-five service providers constituted 98.68% market share of the total broadband subscribers April. This includes Reliance Jio with 314.81 million broadband subscribers, Bharti Airtel 115.71 million, Vodafone Idea 109.66 million, BSNL 22.29 million and Tata Teleservices 1.94 million broadband subscribers.