Despite being India’s largest telecom operator by market share, Reliance Jio has seen a slowdown in its pace of user addition, according to the data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
In June, Reliance Jio added 1.9 million mobile subscribers, bringing its total base to 476.5 million. This marks a decline from May, when Jio added 2.2 million subscribers. The last time Jio saw a similar low in user additions was in February 2023, when it added just 1 million users. Since then, the company has been consistently adding 2-4 million subscribers each month, according to Trai data.
Analysts attribute this slowdown to a combination of factors, including a general deceleration in overall subscriber growth across the country and Jio’s efforts to purge inactive users from its network, which may have reduced its net subscriber addition count.
As of the end of June, the total mobile subscriber base in India grew by 1.57 million, reaching 1.17 billion. May saw an overall subscriber addition of nearly 2 million.
Bharti Airtel added 1.25 million mobile users in June, increasing its total wireless user base to 389 million. Vodafone Idea, however, continued its streak of subscriber losses for the 39th consecutive month, shedding 860,889 users and reducing its base to 217.3 million. State-owned BSNL also continued its subscriber decline, losing 745,450 users in June, bringing its base down to 85.6 million.
Currently, Jio leads the mobile user market with a 40.7% share, followed by Bharti Airtel at 33.2%, Vodafone Idea at 18.6%, and BSNL at 7.3%.
In June, Trai received a total of 11.84 million requests for mobile number portability (MNP). “The cumulative MNP requests increased from 985.60 million at the end of May to 997.44 million at the end of June, since the implementation of MNP,” Trai reported.
The total active user base across all telecom operators reached 1.061 billion in June, up slightly from 1.059 billion in May, the Trai data showed. Active users accounted for approximately 90.65% of the total wireless subscriber base of 1.17 billion at the end of June.
Reliance Jio led the addition of active users, gaining nearly 4 million active subscribers during the month—the company’s highest in a year—bringing its active subscriber base to 440.9 million. Airtel added 657,128 active users, taking its total active user base to 384.8 million, according to the data. Vodafone Idea lost 2.7 active subscribers, its highest loss in 10 months. The same reduced its total active user base to 188.3 million as of June end, Trai data showed. BSNL also witnessed a dip, losing 655,201 active users, bringing its base to 46.5 million.
Regarding 4G/5G subscribers, the three private telecom operators added a net 5.6 million users in June, bringing the total 4G/5G subscriber base for these operators to 898.2 million. Vodafone Idea has yet to launch its 5G services.