Jio adds nearly 45 lakh new customers in June, Vodafone Idea loses 48.2 lakh

Reliance Jio added 44.9 lakh customers in the month of June and strengthened its hold on the telecom sector, while Airtel and Vodafone Idea both lost customers — at 11.3 lakh and 48.2 lakh respectively. In June, all operators except Jio (which is India’s largest) lost subscribers. 

It is possible that the subscriber loss came at a time that many feature phone users gave up their connection because they were not able to recharge their phones. Monthly decline rates of urban and rural mobile subscription were 0.18% and 0.40% respectively. The share of urban and rural mobile subscribers in total wireless user base was pegged at 54.3% and 45.7%, respectively at the end of June.

As things stood in June, Jio had a wireless customer base of 39.7 crore, Airtel at 31.6 crore and Vodafone at 30.5 crore. 

Jio holds 34.82% market share, Airtel holds 27.76%, Vodafone Idea held 26.75%, BSNL 10.37%, MTNL 0.29% and Reliance Communications 0.002%.

In terms of increase of wireless subscribers, Kerala saw the most increase at 0.8% while Tamil Nadu saw the maximum decrease at -2.7%. 

The total number of broadband subscribers in India rose from 683.7 million (68.3 crore) at the end of May to 698.23 million (69.8 crore) at the end of June, a growth rate of nearly 2%.

The top 5 service providers constituted 98.93% market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of June, Trai said. These are Reliance Jio (57.05%), Airtel (21.67%), Vodafone Idea (16.68%), BSNL (3.29%) and Atria Convergence (0.24%).