India’s telecom subscriber base grew to more than 1.17 billion in October with Bharti Airtel maintaining its leadership in mobile subscriber addition, according to the monthly report released by sector regulator TRAI on Wednesday.
This is the second consecutive month in which Airtel added the highest number of subscribers. In September, it had regained the leadership position in subscriber addition after a gap of four years. The company added 3.67 million new customers in October, taking its total wireless customer base to 330.28 million, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) report said.
Airtel was followed by Reliance Jio, which added 2.22 million new mobile customers, taking its total subscriber base to 406.35 million during the reported month.
The other four mobile service providers — Vodafone Idea Ltd. (VIL), BSNL, MTNL and Reliance Communications — reported loss of subscriber base.
VIL lost the maximum mobile customers in the month at 2.65 million subscribers, with its wireless subscriber base dipping to 292.83 million. BSNL lost 10,208 customers, MTNL 7,307 and Reliance Communications lost 1,488 mobile customers. India’s overall telecom subscriber base, however, rose to 1,171.8 million from 1,168.66 million in September.
