The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released the Broadband and Telephone subscribers’ data for April 2023 on Wednesday. The number of mobile connections in India dropped by 0.8 million in April this year, after a jump of 1.96 million in March, the highest in nine months, the data showed.
Reliance Jio’s subscriber gains were significantly higher than Bharti Airtel in April. Jio added 3.04 million mobile subscribers while Airtel recorded 76,328 additions over the same period. Vodafone Idea lost 2.99 million subscribers during the period, causing its mobile user base to decline further to 233.75 million in April-end.
At the April end, Jio’s subscriber tally stood at 433.27 million, while Bharti Airtel’s small gain in subscriber tally took it to 370.98 million.
According to TRAI data, with the Vodafone’s heavy user losses and Airtel’s moderate gains India’s mobile use base fell by 0.07 per cent or 0.79 million to around 1.143 billion in April-end. Overall wireless teledensity also slipped marginally to 82.34 per cent in April from 82.46 per cent in March.
The TRAI data also showed that the total broadband subscribers increased to 850.94 million, recording a total gain of 0.52 per cent during the month. The top five service providers constituted 98.39 per cent of the market share at April's end.
Reliance Jio Infocomm’s user base stood at 441.92 million, Bharti Airtel at 224.37 million, Vodafone Idea at 123.58 million, BSNL at 25.26 million and Atria Convergence at 2.14 million.
In the wireline segment, the total subscribers increased by 0.97 million or 3.44 per cent in April 2023. Reliance Jio added 0.3 million landline users, increasing its landline user base to 9.41 million and Bharti Airtel gained 0.1 million users, taking its landline user base to around 7.25 million. While state-owned BSNL lost almost 94,492 wireline users, reducing its user base to 7.01 million, according to TRAI data.
As per TRAI, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel increased customer market shares to 37.9 per cent and 32.45 per cent respectively over the previous month while Vodafone Idea’s market share decreased to 20.4 per cent.
In rural India, Jio gained 1.58 million users, Airtel added 0.19 million users, and VI lost 1.41 million subscribers.
