Jio Adds 6.25 Mn Users, Vodafone Idea Loses 3.5 Mn in Feb: TRAI

February saw two of India’s largest telecom operators, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Bharti Airtel, add 6.25 Mn and 0.85 Mn customers respectively, even as Vodafone Idea lost 3.46 Mn of its customers. 

According to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), by the end of February, Jio had 383.6 Mn subscribers, Airtel had 328.9 Mn and Vodafone Idea had 325.5 Mn customers. Consequently, the market shares of the three telecom operators, Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, were 32.99%, 28.35% and 28.05% respectively.

Another key metric gauged from the data collected by TRAI is the Visitor Location Register (VLR), reflecting the number of active subscribers on a mobile network. VLR for February indicated that  95.55% of the users were active for Airtel, 90.46% for VIL and 81.25% for Jio.

Together, the three private service providers captured 89% of broadband subscribers in February. 

Meanwhile, the number of telephone subscribers increased by 0.32% in February, growing from 1,177.02 Mn at the end of January 2020 to 1,180.84 Mn at the end of February. Of these, urban telephone subscribers were 661 Mn while rural subscribers stood at 519 Mn. 

As for the wireless subscribers (2G, 3G & 4G), an increase of 0.36%, from 1,156.44 Mn to 1,160.59 Mn was reported by TRAI. 

In the mobile broadband sphere, Reliance Jio led the race with 377.4 Mn users, Bharti Airtel had 144.7 Mn and Vodafone Idea had 117.9 Mn. 

According to reports from 341 operators in February cited by TRAI, the number of broadband subscribers increased to 681 Mn at the end of the month, registering a marginal growth rate of 1.15%. 

“Top-five service providers constituted 98.9% market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of February. These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (383.67 million), Bharti Airtel (146.10 million), Vodafone Idea (118.25 million), BSNL (24.67 million),” it said. 

The wireline/fixed broadband category saw BSNL command a 42.57% share, followed by Bharti Airtel had 21.43% share.

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