Jio surpasses BSNL in wireline services, leads in wireless and fixed broadband categories too

Reliance Jio surpassed BSNL to become the largest wireline service provider in the month of August, with over 7.38 million subscribers, making it the leading player in all three categories of wireless or mobile, fixed internet to the home and wireline services in the country.

Jio is the largest mobile services provider with over 419 million subscribers and it also leads in the fixed broadband services category with 6.56 million customers, according to subscriber data issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

The Mukesh Ambani-owned carrier had a 28.3% share of the wireline market compared to BSNL’s 27.46% with over 7.1 million customers, while Bharti Airtel was at No 3 with 23.86% share and nearly 6.2 million customers. While BSNL lost about 15,000 customers in the segment in the month, Jio gained about 262,000, that aided in tipping the scale to its side. Airtel gained over 119000 customers in the month, strengthening its ranking.

Overall, the wireline segment grew to 25.9 million customers, with net addition of 343,790 customers in August.

In the mobile telephony segment, Jio added over 3.2 million customers in the month, higher than Airtel’s net addition of over 326,000 while Vodafone Idea lost 1.9 million customers. Subsequently, the total customers for Jio crossed 419 million, while Airtel’s aggregated to 363.8 million and Vodafone Idea’s dropped to 253.1 million.

The country’s overall mobile phone subscription increased by over a million to 1149 million or 1.1 billion. By subscribers, Jio’s market share was 36.48%, Airtel’s was 31.66% and Vodafone Idea’s was 22.03% in August. Public sector unit BSNL followed the top three with 9.5% share.

In the fixed broadband segment which includes fibre to the home, Jio led the market followed by Airtel clocking 5.13 million customers and BSNL with 3.88 million. Atria Convergence Technologies or ACT had 2.13 million in the month and No 5 players Hathway Cable & Datacom secured 1.13 million customers.