The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recently released data regarding the various telecom operators and their performance in the month of January. The data revealed that Sunil Mittal led Bharti Airtel has added more mobile broadband users in January then Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Jio.
As per TRAI data, Airtel managed to add around 99.7 lakh new mobile broadband users taking its mobile broadband user from 97.99 million at the end of 2018 to 107.96 milion in January 2019. While Jio in the same period added 93.2 lakh new mobile broadband users and was trailing behind Airtel by a narrow margin.
Mobile broadband refers to broadband access through mobile devices such as dongles.
The report also revealed that for the third time in telecom history, total telecom users in India exceeded 120 crore mark. The last time it happened was in May 2018, and before that, in July 2017.
Also, Mobile users in India have now crossed the historic mark of 118 crores, which increased by 1 crore when compared to December.
However, in terms of new subscribers Reliance Jio was way ahead of its other rivals and added about 90 times more subscribers then Bharti Airtel.
The same report said Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Jio added about 9.3 million new subscribers this year. Jio is followed by state owned BSNL which managed to add 9,86,681 new subscriber which as compared to Jio’s number is much less.
The third spot was bagged by Bharti Airtel which could only get 1,03,389 new subscriber in January this year. On the other hand, the newly merged telecom Vodafone-Idea Ltd witnessed loss of 3.5 million subscribers.
The tariff war started by Jio by its arrival in 2016 has been getting more fierce every passing day with all the major players like Jio, Airtel, Vodafone-Idea Ltd making every move to counter others to become the telecom market leader.
Also read: Jio adds 93 lakh new subscribers, Voda-Idea losses 35 lakh subscriber in Jan : TRAI