India mobile subscriber base up marginally to 1282.38 million in June: TRAI data

Synopsis

India's mobile subscriber base saw a slight increase in June, reaching 1282.38 million users. Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio led net additions for core mobile subscribers. Machine-to-machine connections also grew significantly, with Bharti Airtel leading additions. Home broadband subscribers increased by 0.7 million month-on-month. Overall subscriber additions have slowed in recent months.

Listen to this article in summarized format

New Delhi: The mobile subscriber base in the country rose marginally to 1282.38 million in June from 1277 million in preceding month, primarily led by net additions from Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio.

As per data shared by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) for the month of June, Bharti Airtel added the maximum mobile subscribers with net additions of 2.99 million followed by Reliance Jio with 2.15 million, Vodafone Idea (Vi) at 0.16 million and 94,006 for BSNL. However, if machine-to-machine (M2M) numbers are excluded, Jio added the most core subscribers with net additions of 1.5 million followed by 1.1 million by Airtel. Vodafone Idea and BSNL lost 0.5 million subscribers each.

The overall mobile subscriber base includes M2M as well as normal/core mobile consumers.

Also read | New ₹ coming: What's behind India's latest currency note move?

As per an analysis done by DAM Capital on Trai’s June subscriber data, the country's total core wireless subscribers increased by 1.6 million month-on-month (MoM) with Jio taking the higher share.

“Mobile wireless subscribers (excluding M2M) increased sequentially by 1.6 million MoM to 1,147 million. Jio added 1.5 million, whereas Airtel added 1.1 million, Vi and BSNL lost 0.5 million subscribers each,” DAM Capital said in a report.

M2M connections maintained the momentum and increased by 3.6 million to 134.7 million connections with Bharti Airtel leading with 1.9 million additions followed by 0.7 million by Jio, 0.6 million by Vi and 0.4 million by BSNL. Current market share for M2M stands at Bharti Airtel 61%, Jio 19%, Vi 16%.

Also read | India's salary hotspots are no longer just big metros

Total home broadband subscribers increased by 0.7 million MoM to 65.6 million driven by an increase of 0.4 million by Jio and Airtel adding 0.2 million. The overall subscriber addition in the segment has slowed down over the past 3-4 months with the current month seeing a steep decline.