The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) today released “Telecom Subscription Data” for August 2020. As per the information available, Bharti Airtel has added more subscribers than Reliance Jio for the first time in more than four years. Mukesh Ambani-led Jio has been leading the subscriber addition chart ever since its inception. Trai says Airtel added 2.8 million new users in August 2020, whereas Jio managed to grab just 1.8 million subscribers. At the end of August 2020, Jio had a market share of 35.08%, followed by Airtel at 28.12% and Vodafone Idea at 26.15%.
Bharti Airtel Beats Jio for the First Time in 4 Years
Reliance Jio launched its commercial services back in September 2016. Since then, the company has amassed more than 400 million users. We have seen Jio adding an average of eight million subscribers almost every month in recent times. The trend has come down drastically as Jio managed to add just 1.8 million new users in August 2020. Airtel’ subscriber base increased by 2.8 million which does come as a surprise to many considering Jio is still offering the best tariff plans for prepaid users. The story of Vodafone Idea remains the same as the telco lost 1.2 million users in August 2020. BSNL managed to add 2.2 lakh new users during the same month. As on August 31, 2020, the private access service providers held 89.35% market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU access service providers, had a market share of only 10.65%. Trai also stated the number of active wireless subscribers in August 2020 was 957.43 million. The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,164 million at the end of July 2020 to 1,167.81 million at the end of August 2020, with a monthly growth rate of 0.33%. The report further added that 7.53 million subscribers submitted their requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP). With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 504.57 million at the end of July 2020 to 512.10 million at the end of August 2020, since the implementation of MNP.
