India’s telecom subscriber base grew to 116.6 crore in March, Airtel leads growth

Bharti Airtel 22.55 lakh mobile network customers in the month of May 2022.

New Delhi: Net subscriber addition by Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio increased the overall telecom user base to over 116.69 crore in March 2022, telecom regulator Trai said in its monthly report on Thursday.

Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio led new customer additions in both mobile telephony as well as fixed line services segment in March.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,166.05 million at the end of February 2022 to 1,166.93 million at the end of March 2022," Trai's subscriber report for March said.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) report said that the urban telephone subscription decreased to 64.71 crore from 64.77 crore and the rural subscription increased to 51.98 crore from 51.82 crore between March and February.

According to the report, the total number of wireless subscribers increased to 114.2 crore in March from 114.15 crore in February.

Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio were the only gainers of new mobile subscribers in March. Airtel's net mobile customer addition in March was 22.55 lakh while Jio's net addition stood at 12.6 lakh.

Vodafone Idea was the biggest loser of mobile subscribers during the reported month. The company lost over 28.18 lakh customers.

State-owned BSNL and MTNL lost 1.27 lakh and 3,101 mobile connections, respectively.

Private telecom operators drove the growth in the wireline (fixed line) segment. The wireline subscriber base increased to 2.48 crore in March from 2.45 crore in February.

Reliance Jio continued to lead growth in the wireline segment with net customer addition of 2.87 lakh. Bharti Airtel added 83,700 new customers, Quadrant 19,683, Vodafone Idea 14,066 and Tata Teleservices 1,054.

BSNL and MTNL lost 67,634 and 15,576 customers in this segment, respectively. The total broadband subscribers also grew to 78.83 crore in March from 78.33 crore in February.

Top five service providers constituted 98.48 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers in March.

"These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (40.92 crore), Bharti Airtel (21.52 crore), Vodafone Idea (12.24 crore), BSNL (2.71 crore) and Atria Convergence (20 lakh)," the Trai report said.