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Billionaire Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Jio added close to 40 lakh wireless subscribers in December 2023: Trai

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Jio added more than double wireless subscribers in December 2023 than rival Bharti Airtel. Jio added close to 40 lakh wireless subscribers in the month under consideration, while, rival, Bharti Airtel, gained just 18.50 lakh customers in the same month. While, Aditya Birla Group owned teleco, Vodafone Idea (VI) continued to lose subscribers in this segment. VI lost more than 13 lakh wireless subscribers in December.

Cash-strapped VI continued to lose market share in the wireless segment.

VI’s market share in the wireless segment has fallen to 19.25 per cent in the month under consideration. While, Airtel’s market share in the relevant segment ballooned to close to 33 per cent. Whereas, Jio continues to be numero uno player in the industry with close to 40 per cent market share in this particular segment.

When it comes to governmnet owned telecos like BSNL and MTNL, these two PSUs continued losing subscriber count and market share in the wireless segment. BSNL lost 1.50 lakh subscribers while, MTNL lost less than 5,000 wireless subscribers.

As a result, private telecos now have close to 92 per cent market share in the wireless segment while that of public telecos further shrunk to single digits.

Overall, all the telecos added net of 43.22 lakh new wireless subscribers.

Total, there were more than 86 crore wireless broadband subscribers in the country as of December 31, 2023. While, there were just under 4 crore wireline subscribers. This takes country’s total broadband subscriber count to around 90 crore.