Continuing its winning streak, Reliance Jio added 3.4 Mn wireless subscribers to its kitty in September, as per monthly subscriber data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

Taking the second spot on the charts was the country’s second biggest telecom operator Bharti Airtel which accounted for 1.3 Mn subscriber additions during the month. Meanwhile, Vodafone Idea (Vi) continued to lose users in droves as it shed 2.32 Mn subscribers in the month of September.

State-owned BSNL and MTNL also saw heavy user churn as they lost 7.49 Lakh and 2,596 wireless users, respectively, during the course of the month. 

The Indian wireless telecom ecosystem saw a net addition of 1.7 Mn subscribers in the month against 1.39 Mn in August 2023. Overall, the number of active wireless subscribers in September hovered around the 1.04 Bn mark.

Meanwhile, Jio continued its stranglehold over the Indian telecom space, accounting for a market share of 39.06%, followed closely by Airtel with 32.85%. VI’s market share stood at 19.78% while BSNL contributed 8.14%. 

The country’s overall teledensity improved to 82.54% in September, up from 82.48% in the previous month. The push was largely led by rural India where teledensity improved further to 57.75% during the month under review compared to 57.67% in August. 

The total number of broadband users (both wireless and wireline) in the country stood at 885 Mn at the end of September with Jio grabbing more than half, 51.86% to be precise, of the total market. Airtel stood at 29.11% while VI took the third spot with 14.29% market share in the broadband market. 

In addition, 12.65 Mn subscribers submitted requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in September, taking the total requests submitted till date beyond the 890 Mn mark. A majority of these, 7.21 Mn, emerged from Zone-I (Northern and Western India) while the remaining 5.44 Mn came from Zone-II (Southern and Eastern India).

The data comes close on the heels of the Centre tabling the much-awaited Telecommunications Bill, 2023 before the Parliament. The proposed law seeks to replace the archaic century-old Indian Telegraph Act of 1885, as well as the Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1933.

Not heeding to the demands of the telcos, the Bill kept OTT platforms outside the ambit of the regulatory framework but critics claimed that the proposed legislation covertly brings internet-enabled services under its purview. 

The Bill also charted out a new definition for ‘telecommunication’ and reiterated a host of compliance mandates for the operators. It also set the stage for the allocation of satellite communication licences through administrative process to private players, ruling against an auction process for the same. 

With this, the fight between telecom giants Jio and Airtel is expected to spill into the satcom domain as their arms Jio Satellite Communications and OneWeb respectively, have licences to offer such services.

The two players have also begun to roll out unlimited 5G data packs for their prepaid and postpaid users as they look to monetise the new generation technology for which they spent billions of dollars for spectrum in auction.