Reliance Jio Adds 1.26 Million Subscribers After 3 Month Decline. Can Airtel, Vi Catch Up?

Jio had lost 3.6 million customers and Vodafone Idea lost 1.5 million in February, while in January, Jio and Vodafone Idea lost 9.3 million and 300,000 users, respectively.

New Delhi: After a three-month decline, Reliance Jio broke its losing streak by adding over 1.2 million customers in March, taking its total base to 404 million while Vodafone Idea’s subscriber losses continued, as the telco lost 2.81 million customers as the first quarter of 2022 came to an end.

Data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) for the month of March also showed that Airtel continued gaining subscriber share with 2.25 million customers added in the month, bringing its tally to 360.03 million subscribers.

Jio has been on a massive cleanup drive of low-cost, dormant, inactive customers since last year, which resulted in a steady decline of customers since December, particularly after the tariff hikes came into effect.

Jio continued to have the largest share of the pie at 35.37%, while Bharti Airtel appeared to have slightly closed the gap with 31.55% share, and Vodafone Idea’s share slipped further to 22.83%, according to the latest subscriber data released by the Telecom Authority of India (TRAI) on Thursday.

As a result of the subscriber gains by the top two telcos, the total wireless subscriber base jumped to jumped to 1142.09 million subscribers, from 114.15 million in February 2022, marking a month-on-month growth of 0.04%, the data said.

According to a report in Mint, Jio had lost 3.6 million customers and Vodafone Idea lost 1.5 million in February, while in January, Jio and Vodafone Idea lost 9.3 million and 300,000 users, respectively. In December, Jio lost more than 13 million customers, its sharpest fall in subscriber base due to the impact of SIM consolidation stemming from tariff hike of 20-25% done in November last year.

Overall telecom user base to more than 1.16 billion crore in March 2022, the total number of wireless subscribers increased to 1.142 billion in March from 1.141 billion in February.

Reliance Jio continued to lead growth in the wireline segment with net customer addition of 2.87 lakh. Bharti Airtel added 83,700 new customers, Quadrant 19,683, Vodafone Idea 14,066 and Tata Teleservices 1,054.