Telecom subscriber base grows marginally to 1.19 bn in December: Trai data

Telecom subscriber base in the country grew marginally to 119 crore in December 2023 on account of new subscriber addition by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, according to a Trai report published on Thursday.

The broadband subscriber base also grew marginally to 90.4 crore, accounting for about 76 per cent of the total subscriber base, as per the monthly subscriber report published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,185.73 million at the end of November to 1,190.33 million at the end of December, showing a monthly growth rate of 0.39 per cent," the Trai report said.

Reliance Jio added 39.94 lakh mobile subscribers while Bharti Airtel onboarded 18.5 lakh.

However, the growth was mitigated with Vodafone Idea (VIL) losing 13.68 lakh mobile customers, state-run BSNL 1.5 lakh and MTNL 4,420 mobile customers.

Wireline subscribers increased to 3.18 crore at the end of December 2023 from 3.15 crore at the end of November 2023.

Reliance Jio led the new customer addition in the wireline segment by adding 2.46 lakh new subscribers.

It was followed by Bharti Airtel, which added 82,317 new subscribers, VIL 9,656, Quadrant 6,926.

BSNL lost 34,250 wireline customers, Tata Teleservices lost 22,628, MTNL 11,325, APSFL 1,214, and Reliance Communications 627 customers.

The broadband segment was dominated by wireless connections, which grew marginally to 86.52 crore in December from 85.79 crore in November.

The wired broadband connections grew 1.46 per cent to 3.83 crore in December from 3.77 crore in November.

Top-five service providers constituted 98.35 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of December.

"These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd 470.19 million, Bharti Airtel 264.76 million, Vodafone Idea 127.29 million, BSNL 25.12 million, and Atria Convergence 2.23 million," the report said.