Telecom subscriber base crosses 1,198 million in April

New Delhi: The telecom subscriber base in the country reached 1,198.89 million in April but growth continued its downward trend in line with slower pace of new customer additions by Reliance Jio.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,194.58 million at the end of March 2017 to 1,198.89 million at the end of April 2017, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.36 per cent," Trai said in its monthly subscriber report.

Total wireless or mobile subscribers base increased by 0.38 per cent to 1,174.60 million in April from 1,170.18 million in March.

The growth rate is at a seven-month low from the peak of 2.67 per cent registered in October, when Reliance Jio had added 19.6 million customers.

Reliance Jio maintained its lead in terms of customer acquisition despite the end of its free 4G service offer.

The company accounted for about 87 per cent of total new mobile customer additions in April

The growth of the company's net subscriber addition, however, slowed down to 3.87 million in April from its peak of 20.2 million new customer additions in December 2016.

Jio was followed by Bharti Airtel which added 2.85 million new mobile subscribers, BSNL with 0.81 million, Vodafone 0.75 million and Idea 0.68 million.

Tata Teleservices was biggest loser of mobile subscribers in April. The net subscriber loss of the company was 1.46 million. Reliance Communications lost 1.32 million subscribers, Aircel 0.33 million, Sistema Shyam 0.27 million and MTNL 2,137 subscribers.

After registering a growth of 0.22 per cent in March, the landline or the wireline subscriber base declined by 0.42 per cent by losing 0.1 million customers. State-run BSNL lost 1.86 million customers followed by MTNL which lost 7,888 customers.

Private companies Tata Teleservices, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone gained new landline customers in April.

The number of broadband subscribers increased to 284.23 million in April from 276.52 million in March, as per the report.