Reliance Jio continued on its growth path in June, picking up 9.7 million subscribers to take its total to 215 million and edging it closer to the country’s second- and third-ranked players Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) figures showed.

Jio, which launched 4G services nationwide in September 2016, expanded its market share to 18.78 per cent (see chart below, click to enlarge) after increasing its mobile user base by 4.7 per cent in June. It trails Vodafone (19.43 per cent share) and Idea (19.24 per cent) by less than 1 percentage point.
The latter two operators received final approval to merge in July from the Department of Telecommunications, which will create the country’s largest player once their businesses are integrated.

Idea posted the second-highest growth rate in June, boosting subscriptions by nearly 3 per cent to 221 million. Vodafone added 275,000, taking its total to 223 million.

The current market leader Bharti Airtel picked up just 11,000 subscribers, maintaining its market share at 30.05 per cent with a total of 345 million.

BSNL added 244,000 subs to end June with 113 million subs and a 9.87 per cent share.

The country’s mobile subscriber base rose by 15.5 million to 1.15 billion.

Troubled Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices together lost more than 1.1 million subs in June.

In the first quarter of the year Jio became the second largest operator in India by “access service gross revenue”, TRAI said in a separate report.