Jio beats Airtel to become India’s 2nd largest fixed-line service provider

Jio led the growth in the segment, adding 2.44 lakh customers in February. Bharti Airtel came second in the segment by adding 91,243 new users. Reliance Jio is now only behind BSNL which has over 75.76 lakh wireline customers. government-owned BSNL and MTNL jointly have a 49.5 percent share in the segment, but lost 49,074 and 21,900 fixed-line customers during the month, respectively. Vodafone Idea added 24,948 customers, Quadrant 18,622 and Tata Teleservices 3,772. 

Reliance Jio surpasses Airtel

The growing trend in the wireline subscriber base has picked up after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The overall wireline subscribers base in the country reached 2.45 crores at the end of February 2022 from 2 crores in January 2021. Private telecom operators are driving the growth in the segment. BSNL’s market share has dropped from 34.64 percent to 30.9 percent in February. On the other hand, MTNL dropped to 11.05 per cent in February 2022 from 14.65 percent in January 2021.

Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have continuously gained market share. The former is said to be aggressive in the segment as its share increased to 24 percent from 14.7 percent between January 2021 to February 2022. Bharti Airtel’s share has increased marginally to 3.52 percent from 23.12 during the same period.

Recently, Jio announced its new Entertainment Bonanza plans with no entry fee and installation charges for new customers opting for postpaid Jio Fiber connections. The company is giving an option for its customers to pay just Rs 100 to get access to six OTT apps and Rs 200 for 14 OTT apps.