NEW DELHI: India’s top two telecom operators- Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel- continue to add customers while debt-laden and cash-starved Vodafone India (Vi) lost its subscriber base once again. In the month of August, Reliance Jio gained 0.65 million wireless customers, taking its gross mobile user base to 443.86 million while Airtel’s subscriber base rose by 0.13 million to 354.19 million. Vi, on the contrary, lost 0.83 million customers, that took its total mobile user base to 271.06 million.
According to data released by telecom regulator Trai, Jio and Airtel have now marginally widened customer market shares to 37.40% (from 37.34% in July) and 29.85% (from 29.83% in July) respectively, while Vi’s market share came down to 22.84% (from 22.91% in July). State-run telco BSNL lost around 60,439 subscribers in August. It commanded a market share of 9.63%.
Telecom analysts have previously pointed out Vodafone Idea losing a subscriber base isn’t surprising as it had removed the base plan of Rs 49 and low-paying users were forced to opt for the Rs 79 plan at least. This had impacted its performance mainly in rural India. The Trai data also showed that Jio boosted its leadership in rural India, adding 0.88 million users in those markets in August, while both Vi and Airtel lost 0.66 million and 0.54 million customers, respectively, in these geographies.