NEW DELHI: Reliance Jio continued to be the only operator to add new subscribers, as the telecom major added 84.45 lakh users in August, taking its customer base to 34.82 crore, while its competitors Airtel and Vodafone Idea kept losing their subscriber base.
According to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), market leader Vodafone Idea, the largest telecom operator in terms of subscribers, lost 49.56 lakh subscribers in August, bringing down its subscriber base to 37.50 crore.
Bharti Airtel, the country's third-largest telecom operator, saw 5.61 lakh customers exiting its network, pulling down its subscriber base to 32.79 crore, as per the data.
State-owned operators BSNL and MTNL saw 2.15 lakh and 6,701 subscribers exiting their networks, respectively.
The total number of wireless subscribers increased by 26.83 lakh to 117.10 crore in August, the TRAI data showed.
"As on August 31, 2019, the private access service providers held 89.78 per cent market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU access service providers, had a market share of only 10.22 per cent," TRAI said in its report.
Total subscribers, including wireless and wireline, grew by 2.54 per cent to 119.18 crore in August. In urban areas, it grew at 2.78 per cent while in rural areas, the total subscribers fell by 0.24 per cent.