Subscriber additions by top three telcos decline 37 per cent

As of April, Bharti remained the country’s largest telecom operator with a base of 276.50 million subscribers followed by Vodafone at 209.82 million and Idea at 196.05 million subscribers. Bharti had a subscriber market share of 29.59 per cent followed by Vodafone at 22.45 per cent and Idea at 20.98 per cent as of April. COAI did not provide subscriber numbers for the new entrant Reliance Jio for April. It said that as per Trai’s March 2017 data, Jio has 108.68 million subscribers. As per Trai, Jio has a subscriber-based market share of 9.29 per cent.

However, the fall was much steeper at 50 per cent for April on a month-on-month basis in case the total subscriber additions for the industry were taken into account. The industry added 2.80 million subscribers in April against 5.68 million in March 2017. In January and February, total subscriber additions by the industry stood at 5.15 million and 2.27 million, respectively.

(With Inputs from FE)