Jio adds five times more subscribers than Airtel in January: Trai data

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio added more than five times new wireless subscribers in January 2024 than its rival Bharti Airtel. Jio added 41 lakh wireless subscribers in the month under consideration, while, rival, Bharti Airtel, gained just around 7.50 lakh subscribers in the same month. While, Aditya Birla Group owned teleco, Vodafone Idea (VI) continued to lose subscribers in this segment. VI lost more than 15 lakh wireless subscribers in January alone.

VI’s market share in the wireless segment has fallen to 19 per cent in January 2024. While, Airtel’s market share in the relevant segment was almost 33 per cent. Whereas, Jio continues to be numero uno player in the industry with close to 40 per cent market share in this particular segment.

When it comes to government owned telecos like BSNL and MTNL, these two PSUs continued losing subscriber count and market share in the wireless segment. BSNL lost more than 11 lakh subscribers while, MTNL lost less than 4,400 wireless subscribers.

People continued to switch from public telecos to private peers where they find better services. State-owned telcos pain has been private players’ gain.

As a result, private telecos now have 92 per cent market share in the wireless segment while that of public telecos has dipped below eight per cent.

BSNL’s market share has fallen to just under eight per cent, while, that of MTNL continues to reel under one per cent.

Overall, all the telecos added 22.22 lakh new wireless subscribers in the first month of the current calendar year.

In total, there were around 116 crore telephone subscribers in the country as of January 31, 2024. While, there were just over four crore wireline subscribers. This takes country’s total telephone subscriber count (wireless + wireline) to close to 120 crore.