Reliance Jio: 7th largest operator; net additions in December beat all other networks combined

New entrant Reliance Jio that broke into top ten operators in its first month of operations has now reached seventh place in the telecom industry.

RJio had 6.40% market share in the wireless subscriber market behind Reliance communications (7.68%), Aircel (8.06%), BSNL (8.59%), Idea (16.90%), Vodafone (18.16%) and Bharti Airtel (23.58%), as per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data released on February 17.

RJio’s net additions in December was the highest among all other networks adding 20,281,930 (over two crore) subscribers to its wireless base.

Image Source: TRAI

Also Read: Reliance Jio captures largest chunk of broadband market in December

The company’s lead was vast as the second highest telecom net additions to this market was Idea who had 2,839,426 new customers while Airtel added 2,502,355 subscribers in December.

The sum total of all other telecoms besides RJio amounted to 9,272,575 (over 92 lakhs) in the last month of 2016.

TRAI recorded the highest growth rate of wireless subscriber base in the month from RJio at 39.10%. It was followed by Quadrant (3.09%) and Idea (1.51%).

Image Source: TRAI

“The Wireless Tele-density in India increased from 85.90 at the end of Nov- 16 to 88.00 at the end of Dec-16. The Urban Wireless Tele-density increased from 159.27 at the end of Nov-16 to 165.04 at the end of Dec-16, and Rural Wireless Tele-density also increased from 52.45 to 52.84 during the same period,” TRAI said.

The total number of RJio subscribers in December were recorded at around 72 million (72,157,644). In January 2017, Mukesh Ambai, MD Reliance Industries announced that the company had crossed 100 million subscribers.

While the company with the largest wireless subscriber base – Airtel’s total subscribers were at the end of December 2016 was over 263 million (263,350,250).

RJio that entered the market in September 2016 offered provided free data up to 4GB limit per day which was then extended to March 2017 with the data up being capped at 1GB per day.

In that month the new entrant had 15,979,745 wireless subscribers out of 20,857,840 total subscriptions, which was 75% of the total.

Image Source: TRAI

The company recently introduced a new offer which provided its customers 1GB of 4G internet data and all other free services like unlimited voice calling, SMS, and access to premium apps at the cost of Rs 100 till the month of June.