Airtel and Vodafone Idea Collectively Lost Over 75 Lakh Subscribers in March, Jio Adds 46 Lakh New Ones: TRAI

After gaining over 9 lakh subscribers in February 2020, Bharti Airtel has lost more than 12 lakh subscribers in March. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has released its telecom subscription data for the month of March, and Airtel and Vodafone Idea have collectively lost more than 75 lakh subscribers. Vodafone Idea saw a steep decline by losing more than 63 lakh subscribers. Reliance Jio continued to add subscribers with more than 46 lakh wireless subscriber additions. Based on TRAI's March data, Jio enjoys 33.47 percent wireless subscriber market share in the country, followed by Airtel who has 28.31 percent market share.

Wireless subscriber base for March

Apart from Reliance Jio adding more than 46 lakh subscribers, BSNL also added over 96 thousand subscribers in March. However, it is considerably lower than its February performance, wherein it added more than 4 lakh subscribers. Vodafone Idea, as mentioned, lost over 63 lakh subscribers in March, much more than the 34 lakh subscribers lost in February. The latest TRAI release says that the total wireless subscribers also decreased from 116 crores at the end of February to 115 crores at the end of March, thereby registering a monthly decline rate of 0.24 percent.

Nonetheless, the top five telecommunication operators in India in March, as per TRAI, include Reliance Jio with 33.47 percent market, followed by Bharti Airtel with 28.31 percent market share, Vodafone Idea with 27.57 percent market share, BSNL with 10.35 percent market share, and MTNL with 0.29 percent market share. By the end of March, Reliance Jio had a total of over 38.7 crore subscribers. Bharti Airtel subscriber base reduced to over 32.7 crores, followed by Vodafone Idea (31.9 crores), BSNL (11.9 crores), and MTNL (33.6 lakh).

Broadband subscribers for March

Coming to the broadband segment, Reliance Jio rules this market as well with 56.50 percent market share. This is followed by Bharti Airtel with 21.61 percent market share, and Vodafone Idea falls in the third place with 17.09 percent market share. BSNL also holds a 3.56 percent market share in this broadband segment, as of March this year. As per TRAI, the total number of broadband subscribers increased from 68.1 crores at the end of February to 68.crores at the end of March with a monthly growth rate of 0.93 percent.

While the wireless broadband segment is ruled by Reliance Jio, the most number of subscribers in the wired broadband segment are with BSNL. As of March, the top five wired broadband service providers were BSNL (80.8 lakhs), Bharti Airtel (24.7 lakhs), Atria Convergence Technologies (16.1 lakhs), Hathway Cable and Datacom (9.7 lakhs) and Reliance Jio (8.7 lakhs). In the wireless broadband segment, the top five providers were Reliance Jio (38.7 crore), Bharti Airtel (14.6 crore), Vodafone Idea (11.7 crore), BSNL (1.6 crore) and MTNL (1.8 lakhs).

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