Jio adds 1.76 mn subscribers in Feb, Vi losses shrink to 20K users: Trai

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Reliance Jio gained the highest number of subscribers in February, with 1.76 million new wireless users, while Bharti Airtel added 1.59 million users, data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) showed on Thursday. Airtel had gained 1.65 million new users in January, while Jio had seen 0.68 million user additions.

 

Vodafone Idea (Vi) continued to lose subscribers, albeit at a much slower rate. The telco lost 20,720 subscribers in February, down from the 1.33 million in January. Meanwhile, state-owned telecom operator BSNL shed 0.56 million users, more than the 0.15 million users who left its service in January. With BSNL keeping tariffs unchanged, a large number of subscribers using entry-level plans had shifted to the telco in July last year, but the additions reversed in the last few months of 2024. The telco is currently aiming to roll out its homegrown 4G network nationwide with 1 lakh towers by June.

 

Jio and Airtel’s mobile wireless market share continued to inch up in February, at 40.52 per cent and 33.67 per cent, respectively. The rise was primarily at the expense of BSNL, whose share fell to 7.89 per cent. Vi had a 17.84 per cent share.

 

The overall number of mobile phone connections in India increased by 2.76 million or 0.24 per cent in February. There were 6.27 million 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) subscribers at January-end in India, up by 9.7 per cent from the 5.72 million users in the preceding month. Of this, 83.5 per cent or 5.23 million subscribers were using Reliance Jio, with the rest being Airtel users.

  FWA delivers high-speed internet using wireless signals instead of traditional wired infrastructure like fibre or cable. A dedicated customer premises equipment (CPE), such as a fixed outdoor antenna or an indoor router, picks up signals from nearby mobile towers and converts them into Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

 

Trai data also revealed that 12.06 million subscribers had submitted requests for mobile number portability (MNP) in the latest month, down from 14.14 million in January and 13.85 million in December.

 

Meanwhile, the number of wireline subscribers increased by 1.88 million in the country, rising 5.36 per cent to 36.91 million.