The company also seems to be the go-to service provider for those wishing to switch providers.
Reliance Jio Infocomm, riding on its superior high-speed LTE network, continues to add both speed and mass.
Having come close to adding double the subscribers its three larger rivals added in December, the company started 2018 by actually adding more than double the users added by the trio, according to data released by the regulator.
The Reliance Industries subsidiary added 8.30 million users in January, more than twice the 3.92 million added by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular combined.
Jio had added 8.01 million users in December, a million users shy of the 9-million mark, data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India showed. The three incumbents had added 4.51 million that month.
By end of January, the Mukesh Ambani-led company had notched up 168.39 million subscribers in less than a year-and-a-half of its launch in September 2016. The company had a 14.62 percent market share, 91 basis points higher than at the end of December.
Bharti and Idea also improved their market shares by 47 and 33 basis points, respectively, but Vodafone saw an erosion of 36 basis points. One basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point.
India, which has a population of 1.3 billion people, had 1.15 billion mobile subscriptions at the end of January, 15.49 million fewer than at the end of 2017.
The newest operator in the Indian telecom sector has reported strong subscriber numbers month after month as consumers take to using its data services, and as the company’s JioPhone, priced at Rs 1,500, attracts more buyers.
The company also seems to be the go-to service provider for those wishing to switch providers. In January alone, a total of 6.18 million requests for porting were received, across operators. With this, such requests cumulatively increased to 344.59 million by the end of January, from 338.41 million at the end of December.
