Jio’s cheaper 4G offers increases its rural customer numbers

• Follow

Owing to cheaper offers on its 4G feature phone, JioPhone, India’s largest telecom operator Reliance Jio, had seen a robust growth in subscriber base from rural areas. In June, the company added 3.02 million subscribers in rural India. Also, the mobile user base increased to 186.52 million for the month, taking its gross user base to 436.7 million. The telco added a total of 5.46 million subscribers for June, according to latest data from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), The Economic Times reported.

Airtel and Vodafone Idea lose out

The data from TRAI also showed that Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Bharti Airtel lost 2.61 and 0.77 million customers in rural areas, in June. In terms of mobile user base both these telcos lost 139.60 million and 171.72 million respectively. Airtel’s gross user base for June rose by 3.81 million to 352.11 million. On the contrary, Vi lost 4.28 million customers, shrinking its gross user base to 273.33 million. This is a clear sign of Vodafone’s inability to compete nationally.

The publication had also reported that Vi and Airtel’s business in rural markets had been hit by the pandemic-induced lockdowns, while Jio’s business was not affected at all, due to the decent subscriptions of its aggressive JioPhone offers.

When it came to the overall rural user base, it noted that Covid-19 led to a decline of 0.15% to 534.35 million in June, as compared to the previous month. On the other hand, urban mobile user base rose by 0.75% to 646.29 million, as migrants came back to work in the cities, once the lockdown curbs were eased.