Growth in the Indian mobile market slowed to 0.72 million new subscribers added in October, the regulator Trai reported. Reliance Jio was the main winner, adding 10.50 million new customers, while market leader Vodafone Idea lost 7.36 million, Bharti Airtel shed 1.66 million, and Tata Teleservices dropped 925,000 customers.
The country ended the month with 1.171 billion mobile lines, up 0.06 percent from a month earlier, with growth mainly coming in urban areas. Including a small drop in wireline subscribers to just over 22 million, the overall teledensity in India reached 91.17 percent, down slightly from 91.20 percent in September.
Trai estimates the number of active mobile subscribers reached 1.022 billion, or 87.33 percent of the total It also recorded 3.22 million requests for number porting in October, suggesting that while growth in the overall market is slowing, competition between operators remains fierce.
After completing their merger at the end of August, Vodafone Idea became the biggest mobile operator, with a share of 36.55 percent of customers. Bharti Airtel had 29.20 percent of the market in October, down slightly from 20.38 percent the previous month, while Reliance Jio continued to grow, reaching a share of 22.46 percent of mobile customers, up from 21.57 percent in September. State-owned BSNL, which started including MVNOs in its figures in October, was in fourth place with 9.70 percent of customers.
The number of broadband subscribers totaled 496.12 million in October, up from 481.70 million the previous month. Mobile internet continued to lead the growth, adding nearly 15 million new users in the month for a total of 477.2 million. Reliance Jio had the most wireless broadband subscribers at 252.25 million, an increase of nearly 10 million from September, while BSNL led the wireline market, with 9.15 million fixed broadband subscribers.
