Jio: Jio gains 30 lakh mobile users; Vodafone Idea loses 12 lakh users in March: TRAI – Times of India

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released data about how the Indian telecom market performed in March. As per the data, the country’s largest telecom operator Reliance Jio added 30.5 lakh mobile subscribers in March. On the other hand, Vodafone Idea has lost 12.12 lakh wireless users during the month. Meanwhile, Sunil Mittal-led telecom company Bharti Airtel also added 10.37 lakh mobile subscribers in March. For the uninitiated, Jio also added the maximum number of mobile subscribers (about 10 lakhs) in February as well, while the second place was taken by Airtel (with 9.82 lakh mobile users).
How the subscriber base of telcos changed
Airtel’s subscriber base went up to 37.09 crores in March against 36.98 crores in February. Jio’s subscribers also increased from 42.71 crore in February to 43 crore in March. While, Vodafone Idea’s mobile subscriber base got reduced to 23.67 crore in March, from 23.79 crore in February. Overall, the number of broadband subscribers increased by 0.86% since last month.
“… the total broadband subscribers increased from 839.33 million at the end of February-23 to 846.57 million at the end of March-23 with a monthly growth rate of 0.86 per cent,” a TRAI report confirmed.
Telecom market share in India
The report also noted that over 98% of the market share of the total broadband subscribers was occupied by the top five service providers in the country at the end of March 2023. This included Jio (43.85 crore), Airtel (24.19 crore) and Vodafone Idea (12.48 crore).
TRAI also mentioned that the total number of telephone subscribers in India went up to 1,172.84 million (117.2 crores) at the end of March 2023. The increase also showed a monthly growth rate of 0.21%.

“Urban telephone subscription increased from 652.16 million at the end of February-23 to 653.71 million at the end of March-23 and the rural subscription also increased from 517.77 million to 518.63 million during the same period. The monthly growth rates of urban and rural telephone subscription were 0.24 per cent and 0.17 per cent respectively during the month of March-23,” TRAI added.
The regulatory body also noted that the overall teledensity in India increased to 84.51 per cent by the end of March 2023. “The Urban Tele-density increased from 133.70 per cent at the end of February-23 to 133.81 per cent at the end of March-23 and rural teledensity also increased from 57.63 per cent to 57.71 per cent during the same period,” the report noted.