Reliance Jio Adds More Users Than Airtel and Idea in March

Reliance Jio has added over 9.42 million users in March 2018, while Idea and Airtel ranked second and third in the list with 9.14 and 8.4 million users added to their networks, respectively.

The data was published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for the month, which clearly shows that Jio hasn’t lost its appeal with users, even though their three-month data plans under various schemes have seen a marginal increase in price.

One must also consider that Jio’s growth comes at a time when its competition Vodafone, Airtel and Idea have been rolling out plans (prepaid and postpaid) similar to that of Jio with bigger’’’ data pack on a longer validity.

The biggest losers during that time were Aircel and Telenor among others, who managed to lose 4.7 million users in the southern part, and 1.7 million users for Telenor across the regions they were available.

It was interesting to note that Vodafone’s numbers weren’t revealed in the data release.

Total count of broadband subscribers grew from 392.06 million in February to 412.6 million in March. The mobile segment accounted for over 95 percent of the total broadband connections.

During this time, India's overall telecom subscriber base crossed 1.2 billion mark, another staggering landmark, for a country, which is still low on internet penetration, even though 4G connectivity points have covered most parts.

When you look at the telecom space as a whole, Airtel leads the sector with over 304.9 million users, followed by Vodafone with 222 million and Idea Cellular with 211.2 million. Reliance Jio has around 186 million as per the last reported figures from the company.

As for Jio continuing to add more users, with its first-ever full-fledged postpaid plan introduced this month that’s bundled with international roaming and data services. The telco is surely eyeing the postpaid users, to increase its revenue per user, which has been falling over the past quarters.