India's largest telecom operator Reliance Jio continued to lead the market in mobile subscriber additions for the second straight month in April whereas troubled Vodafone Idea (Vi) lost customers.
As per the latest Telecom Subscription Data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), the Mukesh Ambani-controlled telecom operator gained 4.7 million users in April and Vi lost 1.8 million customers during the same period.
Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel added just 0.51 million mobile subscribers in April.
Reliance Jio Infocomm subscriber base swelled to 427.6 million and Vi's subscriber base shrunk to 281.9 million as of April. Bharti saw its user base rising marginally to 352.9 million.
Currently, India has a wireless base of 1,183.11 million. Overall, the number of telephone subscribers in India rose to 1,203.4 million at the end of April, a growth of 0.19% over the previous month, TRAI said.
In the fixed wireline segment, Jio was the top gainer, adding 194,800 new connections, whereas Airtel gained 59,305. With this, Jio has narrowed its gap with Airtel in the wireline category, holding 3.5 million subscribers against the latter’s 4.7 million.
In terms of wireless broadband users, Jio’s base stood at 427.67 million, followed by Airtel at 190.99 million, Vodafone Idea at 122.53 million. The top five service providers constituted 98.8% market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of April.
“These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm (430.47 million), Bharti Airtel (194.18 million), Vodafone Idea (122.54 million), BSNL (24.52 million) and Atria Convergence (1.87 million),” TRAI said.
