Indian telecom segment is surely a crazy one. With Jio¡¯s entry in the market in 2016, it has managed to take down major stalwarts of the Indian telecom market, including Airtel and Vodafone, by offering extremely affordable data plans.
However, it looks like some telecom brands are catching up. A recent report by TRAI has revealed that in the month of August this year, Airtel managed to add more subscribers than Jio. However, Airtel added around 28.99 lakh subscribers, Jio on the other hand was able to add only around 18.64 lakh subscribers. Vi or Vodafone Idea was even behind, with a decline of 12.28 lakh subscribers in August.
Even with this crazy lead by Airtel, Jio remains the telecom operator with the largest market share of 35.08 percent, followed by Airtel at 28.12 percent.?
TRAI¡¯s report for the month of August also revealed that total wireless subscribers went up to 114,792, compared to 114,418 in the month of July -- an approximate growth of 0.33 percent.
The blow for Jio was considerable in August looking at the subscriber addition of 18.64 lakhs when in July it was around 35.54 lakhs. Surprisingly, Airtel too got lesser subscribers onboard in August (28.99 lakhs), when compared to July (32.60 lakhs). Basically, Airtel managed to add 10.35 lakh more subscribers than Jio in this month. Vodafone Idea lost the most here. In July, it saw the addition of 37.26 lakh subscribers, whereas August had just 12.28 lakh new subscribers.?
For wireless subscribers, Airtel experienced a monthly growth rate of 0.91 percent. Jio on the other hand was behind, with a growth rate of 0.47 percent.?
Airtel¡¯s secret sauce to getting a good number of new subscribers could be probably due to exciting deals with data plans pairing it with OTT platforms deals like Netflix, Hotstar and others -- something Reliance Jio has also started to offer with its plans.?