Mobile subscriber market share of Reliance Jio has topped 40% in February, data by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India showed on Monday.
Jio has been leading the competition for nearly two years now in terms of subscriber additions. As of February end, the company’s mobile user base was at 467.6 million, a month-on-month increase of 3.6 million. The company’s market share was rose to 40.15% from 39.9% in January.
This assumes significance as Jio, with its aggressive network expansion and JioPhone 4G phone, is mostly getting benefited from the churn of users by Vodafone Idea and BSNL, and 2G to 4G migration, analysts said. Last month, Reliance Jio added 4.18 million mobile users, which was its highest in 19 months.
On the other hand, Bharti Airtel added 1.53 million mobile users in February, taking its base to 384 million. The company’s mobile subscriber market share rose marginally to 32.97%.
The two operators – Jio and Airtel – now own 73.1% of the telecom subscriber market, according to Trai data.
Vodafone Idea lost subscribers for the 35th straight month in February. The telecom operator lost 1.02 million users, taking its total base to 220.5 million. The company’s subscriber market share in February fell to 18.93% from 19.09% in January.
BSNL lost 171,588 users, and its subscriber base was at 90.4 million. The state-owned telecom operator lost subscribers for the 26th straight month. Its market share was at 7.78% in February, down from 7.82%.
Overall, the subscriber base in the country rose by 3.9 million to 1.164 billion in February. In January, the subscriber base rose by 2.2 million.
With regard to active subscribers, Airtel continued to lead the additions for the three straight months – December to February, according to Trai.
The company’s active subscribers in February rose by 1.49 million, compared to 1.15 million additions by Reliance Jio, and loss of 1.12 million active users by Vodafone Idea as well as 91,525 users lost by state-owned BSNL during the month.
As of February end, Airtel’s active subscriber base was at 382.6 million, compared to 426.7 million of Jio, 193.8 million of Vodafone Idea, and 48.2 milllion of BSNL, according to Trai data.
The overall active subscriber base rose by 1.46 million in February. Of the total 1.164 billion mobile subscribers, 1.052 billion or 90.33% were active, according to the peak visitor location register, which shows the number of active users, including those roaming on a mobile operator’s network.
Notably, Airtel had lost 1.2 million active subscribers in October last year, which was the highest in 18 months. The company in November also lost over 400,000 active users. Post that, it added over 3 million active users in December and 3.5 million in January.
Analysts had said the loss of active subscribers by Airtel that time was a one-time phenomena and was not because of any issues in the company’s fundamentals.
With regard to 4G/5G, the three telecom operators net added 5.65 million subscribers, Trai data showed. As of February end, a total of 876.44 million 4G/5G subscribers were there in the country for the three private telecom operators. Vodafone Idea is yet to launch 5G.
Bharti Airtel added 2.27 million 4G/5G users in February, taking its 4G/5G subscriber base to 262.03 million. Vodafone Idea lost 220,000 4G subscribers, taking its base to 126.55 million. All Jio users are on 4G or 5G.
According to Trai, in February, 11.54 million subscribers submitted their requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP). “With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 939.55 million at the end of January to 951.09 million at the end of January 2024, since implementation of MNP,” Trai said.