Jio Adds 11.796 Million Subscribers in July, 10 Times More Than All Rivals Combined: TRAI

Jio was the biggest gainer of subscribers in July this year, according to data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI). This represented a monthly growth rate of 0.89 percent for Jio, with a total of 11.79 million new subscribers. When compared to the gains of all the rival telecom operators, the Mukesh Ambani-promoted operator has over 10 times new subscribers as Vodafone, Airtel and BSNL (the only operators that had an increase in users in July) had a net user increase of 1.14 million. As for the entire industry, the number of total telephone subscribers went from 1,168.89 million at the end of June to 1,179.32 million at the end of July. Out of this, the total wireless subscribers (GSM, CDMA and LTE) increased from 1,146.49 million at the end of June to 1,157.04 million at the end of July, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of 0.92 percent.

Jio gained a rather significant number of new wireless subscribers in July thanks to the Jio Monsoon Hungama offer. With 11.796 million new subscribers in the month of July, it has captured 19.62 percent of the market, going ahead of Vodafone and Idea both with respect to market share.

As mentioned above, other telecom operators performed fairly meekly in the month of July, with Vodafone coming in second at 0.609 million subscriber additions and a market share decrease from 19.43 percent in June to 19.30 percent in July. Airtel also added 0.313 million subscribers in July, after a good performance in May due to its merger with Telenor. The company still manages to keep the highest market share at 29.81 percent, but this is also on a decline as the June market share was at 30.05 percent.

BSNL managed to add more subscribers than Idea with 0.225 million additions capturing 9.80 percent market share. Idea's subscriber additions were at an all-time low with just 5,489 additions in the month of July. Idea enjoys a market share of 19.07 percent. It is worth noting that the total additions of Vodafone, Airtel, Idea, and BSNL combined, amount to only 1.757 million, much less than what Reliance Jio achieved in the same month.

Telcos wireless subscriber additions in the month of July
Photo Credit: TRAI

Out of the total subscriber additions of Reliance Jio, 5.803 million additions were from rural areas. This increase is largely credited to the Jio Monsoon Hungama offer that allowed users to exchange their feature phone for a Jio Phone for just Rs. 501. We also expect a surge in additions in August due to the flash sales of the Jio Phone 2.

Coming to broadband, Reliance Jio continues to hold the most amount of market share at 49.33 percent with 227.05 million wireless subscribers. BSNL holds the most amount of wired broadband subscribers at 9.15 million, but its total market share is at 4.38 percent.