Reliance Jio, BSNL drive telecom subscriber base to 1,183.77 mn in April

The country's telecom subscriber base grew marginally to 1,183.77 million in April on account of net mobile customers gain by Reliance Jio and state-run telecom firm BSNL, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai) report released Monday.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India slightly increased from 1,183.51 million at the end of March 2019 to 1,183.77 million at the end of April 2019, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.02 per cent," Trai said in subscriber report for April.

Wireless subscribers grew by about half a million to 1,162.30 million in April from 1,161.81 million in March.

Though Reliance Jio and BSNL jointly added over 8.31 million customers, the growth was mitigated by loss of customers by Bharti Airtel, Tata Teleservices, Vodafone Idea, public sector telecom firm MTNL and Reliance Communications (RCom).

Jio led the market by adding over eight million customers alone taking its total subscriber base to 314.8 million. BSNL followed Jio .