Reliance Jio Adds 7 Times More Subscribers Than Idea In December

Reliance Jio continues to be the biggest gainer as far as new subscribers are concerned. The youngest telecom operator in the country added 2.02 crore new users in December, seven times more than its closest rival, according to the data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday.

India's total mobile subscriber base grew 2.5 percent, or by 2.8 crore users, with Reliance Jio garnering more than 72 percent of them. The Mukesh Ambani-led operator now has 7.21 crore users within four months of launching its services.

Reliance Jio has challenged its rivals by offering free voice and data services, which the company has extended till March 2017. In November, the company had added 1.6 crore new users compared to 25 lakh by its nearest competitor.

Reliance Jio was followed by Idea Cellular Ltd. which managed to add 28.39 lakh new customers in December. The country's largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel Ltd. added 25 lakh subscribers, while Vodafone India gained less than 19 lakh new users.

Sistema and Tata Teleservices Ltd. together lost 19.24 lakh customers during the months.

The total subscriber base in India now stands at 112.73 crore by the end of December 2016.

Broadband Services

The number of broadband subscribers increased by 8.17 percent to 23.6 crore subscribers, with Reliance Jio owning 30.6 percent of the market as on December 31, 2016.

56.7 lakh customers requested for mobile number portability in December, taking the total number of people who have retained their old number while shifting to a new service provider to 25.5 crore. The most porting requests came from Karnataka (11 percent) followed by Rajasthan (8.5 percent).

Of the total 112.73 crore subscribers, 98.8 crore or 87.7 percent were active subscribers as of December-end 2016.

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