BSNL, Jio gain new subscribers in October, overall telecom user crosses 119 cr

Only two operators, Reliance Jio and state-run BSNL, gained new subscribers in October, leading to marginal growth in overall telecom user base to 119.2 crores, according to the Trai data.

Reliance Jio and BSNL jointly added over 1.08 crore new mobile phone customers, while rest of the operators -- Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel, Tata Teleservices, MTNL and Reliance Communications -- lost more than 1.01 crore customers. Reliance Jio alone added over 1 crore and BSNL added 3.66 lakh customers.

"Virtual Network Operator (VNO) of BSNL has started reporting of its subscribers in the month of October 2018 and the same has been included in the subscriber number of BSNL," the report said. Vodafone Idea lost 73.61 lakh, mobile subscribers, Airtel 18.64 lakh, Tata Teleservices lost 9.25 lakh, MTNL 8,068 and RCom 3,831 customers. Mobile telephony dominates Indian telecom market with 98 per cent market share.

The number of telephone subscribers in the country increased to 119.2 crores in October from 119.14 crores in September, according to subscriber data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). Mobile phone segment grew to 117 crores in October from 116.92 crores in September while the wireline subscribers base declined to 2.2 crores from 2.21 crore during the period under review. The decline in wireline base was mainly due to BSNL which lost 85,200 fixed line customers, followed by RCom (14,120), MTNL (8,684), Tata Teleservices (3,398) and Quadrant (3092).

Bharti and Vodafone gained 16,340 and 8,894 wireline customers respectively in October. The number of broadband customers of 306 service providers increased by around 3 per cent to 49.61 crores in October from 48.17 crores in September.

Top five service providers constituted 98.42 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers in October. "These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (26.27 crores), Bharti Airtel (10.13 crore), Vodafone Idea (10.13 crore), BSNL (2.03 crore) and Tata Tele Group (25 lakh)," the report said.