According to data released by telecom regulator Trai on Monday, Reliance Jio became the first mobile service provider to cross the 40 crore customer mark in India with a net addition of over 35 lakh subscribers in July.
India’s number of telephone subscribers rose from 1,160.52 million at the end of June 2020 to 1,164 million at the end of July, showing a 0.30 percent monthly growth rate. From 636.83 million at the end of June, urban telephone subscriptions rose to 638.46 million at the end of July. During the same period, rural subscriptions also rose from 523,69 million to 525,54 million. In July, the monthly growth rate for urban and rural telephone subscriptions was 0.26% and 0.35%, respectively.
According to the monthly subscriber survey of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), cell phone connections in the country rose to 114.4 crores in July from 114 crores in June, with urban and rural connexions standing at 61.9 crores and 52.1 crores, respectively.
After several years, fixed-line connections increased slightly to 1,98,20,419, with the lead being taken by private telecom operators led by Jio.
In the fixed-line customer market, public sector telecom companies BSNL and MTNL and loss-making private firms Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices continued to report declines.
At 40,08,03,819 subscribers, Reliance Jio now dominates India’s mobile market with a 35.03 percent market share.
32.6 lakh and 3.88 lakh mobile customers were added in July by Bharti Airtel and BSNL respectively. Vodafone Idea has lost over 37 lakh clients. 5,457 mobile service clients were also lost by State-run MTNL.
Dominated by the mobile market, broadband connections rose by 1.03 percent to 70.54 crore in July from 69.82 crore in June.
“At the end of July, the top five service providers accounted for 98.91 per cent of the market share of total broadband subscribers,” the Trai report said.
There were 40.19 crore broadband customers for Reliance Jio, 15.57 crore for Bharti Airtel, 11.52 crore for Vodafone Idea, 2.3 crore for BSNL and 16.9 lakh for Atria Convergence in July.
The number of wireless internet subscribers was 720.7 million (97 percent share of the total pie) and 22.4 million were wired internet subscribers. A staggering 92.5% of all internet subscribers used broadband for internet access—687.4 million broadband users and 55.7 million narrowband subscribers were part of the internet customer base.
Jio is not only the market leader in the internet market but they are also creating a digital space to dominate and the market share of Jio which is more than double of Bharti Airtel shows the sheer dominance Jio has in the Indian digital space right now.
