Telecom Subscriber Base Rise Marginally to 1,170.75 Million in Jan 2023: TRAI

The telecom subscriber base in the country grew marginally to 1,170.75 million in January, driven by net customer gain in the fixed line segment, according to a sector regulator TRAI report released on Friday.

The net gain in the wireline segment was 0.28 million customers while mobile telephony recorded a net gain of 0.09 million subscribers.

Even though Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel jointly added 0.29 million new customers, the gain was offset by BSNL and Vodafone Idea (VIL) losing 0.28 million customers.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,170.38 million at the end of December 2022 to 1,170.75 million at the end of January 2023, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.03 percent," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said in the subscriber report for the month of January 2023.

The wireline or fixed line connections in the country increased to 27.73 million in January from 27.45 million in December.

The growth in the wireline segment was driven by Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Quadrant, which added 0.21 million, 0.11 million and 5,949 customers, respectively.

State-owned MTNL was the biggest loser in the segment as it lost 29,857 customers. It was followed by BSNL, which lost 19,781 wireline customers, Tata Teleservices 9,444, VIL 3,727 and Reliance Communications 275 customers.

In the mobile telephony or wireless segment, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel added 1.65 million and 1.28 million customers, respectively. BSNL, VIL and MTNL mitigated the growth in the segment by losing 1.48 million, 1.35 million and 2,960 mobile subscribers, respectively.

The broadband subscriber base in the country grew to 839.18 million in January from 832.2 million in December.

"Top five service providers constituted 98.39 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of January-23. These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm (434.02 million), Bharti Airtel (237.40 million), Vodafone Idea (125.03 million), BSNL (27.05 million) and Atria Convergence (2.14 million)," TRAI said.