Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Oct 19: Private telecom operator Reliance Jio overtook state-run BSNL in August to become the nation’s largest fixed-line service provider, according to a TRAI report released on Tuesday.
For the first time since the nation’s telecom industry initially began, a private operator has taken the top spot in the wireline market. Jio’s wireline customer base reached 73.52 lakh, while BSNL’s was at 71.32 lakh, according to Trai’s subscriber data for August.
While Jio only started offering wireline services three years ago, BSNL has been offering them for the past 22 years. From 2.56 crore in July, the number of wireline customers in the nation increased to 2.59 crore in August.
Jio added 2.62 lakh new customers, Bharti Airtel 1.19 lakh, Vodafone Idea (Vi) 4,202, and Tata Teleservices 3,769. The private sector led the growth.
In August, the state-run telecom companies MTNL and BSNL respectively lost 15,734 and 13,395 wireline users.
According to a Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) study, the nation’s total number of telecom subscribers increased marginally to 117.5 crore in August, with Jio adding the majority of the new users and rural areas rising at a faster rate than urban centres.
Monthly growth rates for telephone subscribers in urban and rural areas were 0.10 and 0.14 percent, respectively.
Only Reliance Jio (32.8 lakh) and Bharti Airtel (3.26 lakh) had an increase in mobile subscribers in August; the biggest loser was the indebted private company Vi. According to the survey, Vi lost 19.58 lakh mobile clients, followed by BSNL with 5.67 lakh, MTNL with 470, and Reliance Communications with 32. In the country, the number of broadband customers increased by 0.81 percent from July to August, reaching 81.39 crore.
