Reliance Jio continued to gain subscribers in the month of August as well. The telecom operator gained the maximum number of active wireless subscribers in August 2023, when compared to the previous month.
According to TRAI’s Telecom Subscription Data report for August 2023, the total number of active wireless subscribers in August was recorded at 1043.38 million, compared to 1,146.25 million in July. This includes subscribers of private players like Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea (Vi) as well as those of two PSU access service providers MTNL and BSNL.
Jio Continues To Gain Maximum Wireless Subscribers
Jio gained 3.24 million new wireless subscribers in August, though this was less than in July when the telecom operator gained close to 3.9 million new subscribers. In June, the company gained 2.2 million users.
Further, according to the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) report, Vi lost 49,782 users in August, which makes it the only private telecom operator to lose subscribers in the month. However, it is important to note that Vodafone’s August loss is quite less when compared to the previous month when over 1.3 million of its subscribers left. Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel, which is the second-largest telecom operator in India added 1.21 million subscribers in August, compared to 1.5 million in July.
BSNL and MTNL also lost subscribers in August. While BSNL lost 2.2 million subscribers in August, MTNL lost 4,280 subscribers respectively. In comparison, the two operators recorded a loss of 1.4 million and 33,623 wireless subscribers in July respectively.
Reliance Jio Had The Largest Wireless Subscribers Market Share in August
The three private players have a collective 91.47 percent collective market share of wireless subscribers. Meanwhile, MTNL and BSNL together held a market share of 8.53 percent.
As for individual market shares in terms of wireless subscribers in August, Jio had the largest 38.81 percent, followed by Airtel at 32.78 percent. The third largest telecom operator Vi had a market share of 19.88 percent. BSNL and MTNL had 8.36 percent and 0.17 percent market share respectively.
As reported by TRAI, 12.67 million subscribers requested Mobile Number Portability (MNP). “With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 864.76 million at the end of July-23 to 877.43 million at the end of August-23, since implementation of MNP,” the report read.
