Reliance Jio Is Now The Biggest Telco By Subscriber Base, Market Share

In three years of commencing operations, Reliance Jio has become the biggest telecom operator in India in terms of subscriber base and revenue market share, beating Vodafone Idea. The Mukesh-Ambani led company added 5.6 million mobile subscribers in the month of November, as per data released by TRAI.

As of 30 November 2019, Reliance Jio has a total user base of 369.93 million and holds 32.04 percent of the market share of over 1.15 billion Indian users.

Bharti Airtel also saw its subscriber base increase in November with an addition of 1.65 million users. Its total subscriber base rose to 327.30 million with a market share increase to 28.35 percent.

Vodafone Idea, on the other hand, lost a record 36.41 million users in November, the biggest decline since April 2018, when it lost 58 million subscribers. However, with 336.25 million subscribers in total, it is now the second-largest telecom operator in the country and has a market share of 29.12 percent.

Excluding October, Vodafone Idea has been recording a fall in subscriber base each month since the commencement of its operations as a new entity after the merger of Vodafone India Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd in September 2018.

Meanwhile, Reliance Jio entered the telecom business in September 2016 with its cheap data plans leading to an unprecedented increase in mobile data and voice calling consumption while disrupting revenue of competitors.

Overall, India's mobile user base fell by 28.81 million subscribers in November.