Jio Added Most Subscribers in April, Airtel and Vodafone Idea Lost Users

Continuing its growth trend, Reliance Jio added around 80.82 lakh subscribers in April, showed data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday. Jio's subscriber base stood at around 31.48 crores at the end of April, it said. State-run BSNL was the only other gainer with over 2.28 lakh new subscribers taking its total tally to around 11.59 crore.

The total number of wireless subscribers (GSM, CDMA, and LTE) increased 0.04 percent from 116.18 crores in March to 116.23 crore at the end of April.

"The wireless subscription in urban areas increased from 650.49 million (65.04 crores) at the end of March 2019 to 652.35 million (65.23 crores) at the end of April 2019. However, in the rural area, it declined from 511.32 million (51.13 crores) to 509.95 million (50.99 crores) during the month. The monthly growth rates of urban and rural wireless subscription were 0.29 percent and (-) 0.27 percent respectively," the TRAI report said.

The other major service providers, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea (VIL), further eroded their subscriber base in April.

Bharti Airtel lost 32.89 lakh subscribers pulling its subscriber base down to around 32.19 crore, while the Vodafone Idea, the largest company in terms of subscriptions, lost 15.82 lakh connections taking its tally to around 39.32 crore subscribers.

In March, Mobile subscriber base of Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel declined by nearly 145 lakh and 151 lakh respectively, totalling nearly 300 million subscribers as of March over the previous month, while Reliance Jio added 94 lakh users, according to the TRAI data.