Reliance Jio Is Finally India’s Largest Telco By Subscribers

Maintaining a steady growth rate through 2019, Reliance Jio has finally surpassed Vodafone-Idea to become the largest telecom service provider in India by market share.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) report highlighting the performance of the telecom industry for the month of November 2019, Reliance Jio’s market share increased to 32.4% from 30.76% in October. In September, Reliance Jio’s market share was at 30.26%.

Overall, Reliance Jio has 369.9 Mn subscribers at the end of November 2019, which is a significant jump from the 280 Mn it had at the end of December 2018.

Jio subscriber base grew by over 32% from December 2018 to November 2019.

Airtel has 327 Mn subscribers, whereas Vodafone-Idea has 336 Mn subscribers in the November 2019 report.

At the same time, Vodafone-Idea lost its lead from 31.49% in October to 29.12% in November. In September, Vodafone-Idea had 31.73% of the market. Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel still holds the third spot with 28.35% of the market. This is a slight hike from 27.52% subscribers in October. BSNL too noted a slight increase from its 9.92% market share in October to 10.19% in November.

The report also noted that Reliance Jio added 5.6 Mn subscribers in November. It was followed by Bharti Airtel and BSNL, which added 1.6 Mn and 346K subscribers in the same time period. Meanwhile, Vodafone-Idea lost over 36 Mn users in November, despite adding 189K subscribers in October 2019. No other telco has noted such a steep decline since May 2019.

Reliance Jio is also dominating the broadband services market with a 56.07% market share, followed by Bharti Airtel with 21.16% and Vodafone-Idea with 18.13% market share. However, the wireline market was dominated by BSNL with a 46.21% market share. Here, Bharti Airtel again stood at the second spot with 20.24%.

Telecom Sector Notes A Decline

Overall, wireless subscribers in India fell to 1154 Mn from the 1183 Mn registered in October, a monthly decline rate of 2.43%. The total number of subscribers noted a 2.40% monthly decline rate with 1175 Mn subscribers, compared to 1204 Mn in the past month.

The urban subscriber base constitutes 665 Mn users, which also noted a decline of 2.30% accounting to a loss of 15.70 Mn users from October.

Along the same lines, rural telephone subscribers decreased by 2.54%, noting a deficit of 15.70 Mn subscribers. In total, 509.89 Mn subscribers are from rural regions.