New Delhi, NFAPost: Reliance Jio has increased its mobile subscriber base to 414.9 million, states a Telecom Authority of India (TRAI) collated data in February.
It has added 4.2 million users. With this, it has managed a comfortable lead in the market. TRAI data highlights that all the three telecom operators Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea added subscribers during the month.
Industry watchers attributed the strong market momentum to positive business sentiments prevailing in February, weeks before the deadly second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic swept through the nation.
According to the TRAI data, Bharti Airtel made 3.7 million net adds, taking its wireless user base in February to 348.3 million. Notably, Vodafone Idea added 6.5 lakh users (after many months), as it expanded its user base to 282.6 million in February.
Overall, Jio topped net additions in February saw a healthy rebound in subscriber net adds at 4.2 million in February, higher than 1.9 million additions in January. Airtel’s net adds in January had been 5.8 million.
The subscriber data by TRAI mentions that the total wireless subscribers increased to 1,167.71 million at the end of February 2021, logging a monthly growth rate of 0.72%.
Wireless subscriptions in urban areas rose to 639.24 million at the end of February (633.27 million in January), while in rural areas wireless subscriptions increased to 528.47 million during the same period (from 526.15 million).
Monthly growth rates of urban and rural wireless subscriptions were 0.94% and 0.44%, respectively, TRAI said. As on February 2021, the private telcos held as much as 89.57% market share of the wireless subscribers, whereas state-owned telecom corporations BSNL and MTNL, had a market share of only 10.43%.
The overall net wireless subscriber additions came in at 8.2 million in the market but both BSNL and MTNL lost subscribers in February.
The market share of Reliance Jio in terms of total wireless subscribers stood at 35.54%, Bharti Airtel at 29.83% and Vodafone Idea at 24.20%, as per TRAI.
The number of broadband subscribers increased to 765.09 million in February from 757.61 million in January. It is a growth of 0.99%. Top five service providers held 98.8% market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of February.
These service providers were Reliance Jio (417.42 million), Bharti Airtel (188.21 million), Vodafone Idea (123.28 million), Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (25.42 million) and Atria Convergence (1.82 million).
