As per the latest TRAI data, the month of June saw additions in BSNL and Reliance Jio users. In comparison, incumbents like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea continued to lose subscribers.
Diving deeper into these numbers, the month saw Reliance Jio users increase by 8.26 million or 82.6 lakh. This is higher than the 8.18 million users added in the month of May. BSNL, despite its ongoing financial and operational issues, gained 0.26 million users.
In comparison, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea lost a combine total of 4.1 million users in June. The merged entity shed 4.14 million users in June, while Airtel lost 29,883 customers. For perspective, Vodafone Idea lost 5.69 million users in May, while Airtel lost 1.5 million users.
Despite such drop in numbers, Vodafone Idea leads the subscribers space with a tally of 38.34 crore. It is followed by Jio with a userbase of 33.12 crore, and Airtel’s user base of 32.03 crore.
Mobile network speeds in India
TRAI has also given a glimpse at the kind of speeds being offered by mobile operators in India in July. Jio topped the 4G download charts with average speeds of 21Mbps. BSNL, on the other hand, topped the 3G download charts with average speeds of 2.5Mbps. Vodafone topped the chart in terms of upload speed. It offered upload speeds of 5.8Mbps.
Reliance Jio effect
Reliance Jio’s entry into the telecom space has had a huge impact on the incumbent operators. Jio brought with it free voice calls and dirt cheap data in 2016. Within three years it has become the largest telecom player in the market by revenue.
The incumbents have seen their subscriber base erode in the past months. But the pace of subscriber loss appears to have slowed down in June. These operators have also introduced minimum recharge schemes to chase higher ARPUs and improve financials.
With Inputs from PTI
