Reliance Jio, Airtel add 1.9 million mobile subscribers in February: Trai

Telecom operators Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel added 19.8 lakh mobile subscribers month-on-month in February, even as Vodafone Idea lost 20 lakh customers, according to data released by Trai on Thursday.

India's largest telecom player Reliance Jio added the maximum number of mobile subscribers at about 10 lakh, taking its wireless subscriber tally to 42.71 crore users in February, as against 42.61 crore in January.

Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel gained 9.82 lakh mobile users during February and ended the month with a wireless subscriber base of 36.98 crore.

Vodafone Idea lost 20 lakh subscribers in the wireless category as its mobile subscriber base shrunk to 23.79 crore, as per data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

"...the total Broadband Subscribers increased from 839.18 million at the end of January-23 to 839.33 million at the end of February-23 with a monthly growth rate of 0.02 per cent," the release said.

The top five service providers constituted 98.38 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of February 2023.

"These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd 435.20 million, Bharti Airtel 239.70 million, Vodafone Idea 123.74 million, BSNL 24.92 million and Atria Convergence 2.14 million," according to the release.

Overall, total wireless subscribers decreased to 1,141.96 million (114.1 crore) at the end of February 23 from 1,143.02 million (114.3 crore) at the end of January 2023, a monthly decline rate of 0.09 per cent.

"Wireless subscriptions in urban areas decreased from 627.13 million at the end of January 23 to 626.37 million and wireless subscriptions in rural areas also decreased from 515.89 million to 515.60 million during the same period. Monthly decline rates of urban and rural wireless subscriptions were 0.12 per cent and 0.06 per cent, respectively," Trai said.