Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Jan 19: Reliance Jio has surpassed 20-year-old state-run telecom giant BSNL as the leading service provider in the fixed-line broadband market after just two years of commercial rollout. Jio currently has 4.34 million fixed-line broadband customers, according to a monthly telecom subscribers report provided by the telecom regulator Trai on Tuesday. Since its founding roughly 20 years ago, the state-owned telecom has controlled the market.
In November, the number of Reliance Jio fixed-line broadband customers climbed to 4.34 million, up from 4.16 million in October. The number of BSNL customers fell to 4.2 million in November, down from 4.72 million in October. In November, Bharti Airtel has 4.08 million fixed line broadband customers.
Jio started commercial roll out of fixed line broadband service, JioFibre, in September 2019. BSNL had 8.69 million wired broadband customers in September 2019, down to less than half in November 2021, while Jio started from beginning.
Bharti Airtel’s wired broadband subscriber base grew by over 70% from 2.41 million in September 2019 to 4.08 million in November 2021, and it is anticipated to overtake BSNL shortly if it continues to grow at the same rate.
According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) subscribers report, broadband customers in India increased to 801.6 million in November from 798.95 million in October, with Reliance Jio maintaining its dominance in the market.
“Top five service providers constituted 98.68 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of November,” Trai said.
In November, Reliance Jio had 432.96 million overall broadband subscribers. Bharti Airtel NSE -1.66 percent came in second with 210.10 million broadband customers, followed by VIL 122.40 million, BSNL 23.62 million, and Atria Convergence 1.98 million.
