As per the latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel gained 1.65 million and 1.28 million mobile users respectively in January 2023, largely at the expense of Vodafone Idea Limited (Vi), which continued to suffer big customer losses. Vi lost a whopping 1.35 million mobile users during the period, further shrinking its user base to 239.96 million. By contrast, Jio and Airtel user bases expanded to 426.17 million and 368.89 million respectively.
Separately, Jio further consolidated its market leadership in the landline space in January 2023. The data by TRAI showed that Jio added 0.21 million wireline users, boosting its landline user base to 8.61 million. Erstwhile market leader Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) lost another 19,781 wireline users, marginally reducing its landline user base to 7.08 million. Meanwhile, Airtel added 0.11 million users, boosting its wireline user base further to around 6.9 million.
Further, the month witnessed Jio and Airtel widening their customer market shares to 37.28 per cent (from 37.14 per cent in December 2022) and 32.27 per cent (from 32.16 per cent in December 2022), respectively, while Vi’s narrowed further to 20.99 per cent as against 21.11 per cent the previous month.
Besides, TRAI data showed that Vi and Airtel lost customers in rural India, while Jio made modest gains. Vi lost 7,29,144 and Airtel gained 9,24,547 in these geographies while Jio added around 6,11,765 .The data released by the regulator also showed that overall wireless tele-density fell marginally to 82.64 per cent in January 2023from 82.75 per cent in December 2022.
During the month, 12.40 million users submitted requests for mobile number portability (MNP), increasing the cumulative requests to 796.84 million by end-January 2023. The wireline users base increased from 27.45 million in end-December 2022 to 27.73 million at the end of January 2023, registering a net rise of 0.28 million.
