Reliance Jio Beats Vodafone Idea To Become The Biggest Telecom Operator In India

Mumbai-based Reliance Jio has been announced to be the biggest telecom operator in India with the number of subscribers of 331.3 m within three years since it started its commercial operations. Accordingly, it overcame Vodafone Idea which is currently in a decline of the number of users to 320 m by June this year, according to a report released on July 26. As per Reliance Industries’ financial report, Reliance Jio reached a number of users of 331.3 m by June this year.

The Indian mobile network operator, led by Mukesh Ambani, had successfully beaten Bharti Airtel in May to gain the second spot in the top mobile operator list in the country with a user base of 322.9 m and a market share of 22.7 percent, as per Trai data. Meanwhile, Airtel achieved a customer base of 320.38 m and gained 27.6 percent of the market share.

Vodafone Ideal was reported on July 26 to see a decrease in user base to 320 m in Q1 of 2019-2020, down from 334.1 m in the March quarter. Vodafone Idea said in its statement:

It is known that Vodafone Idea becomes the biggest network operator with more than 400 m users after the merger of Vodafone India with Idea Cellular.

But this deal does not save Vodafone Ideal from losing its monthly users as it wrote off millions of users who didn’t subscribe to the minimum recharge plan.

For further information, recently, Reliance Jio has been reported to be the largest mobile tower client of BSNL and MTNL. According to the information shared by Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, MTNL and BSNL have respectively rented out 392 and 13,051 mobile tower sites. Of which, Reliance Jio has rented 137 sites from MTNL and 8,307 from BSNL.