Reliance Jio corners 9% active subscriber base, mostly from smaller telcos

Reliance Jio Infocomm, India’s youngest mobile operator, has garnered around 9% of all active mobile phone users in the country, mostly at the cost of smaller telcos such as Telenor, Aircel, Reliance CommunicationsBSE 4.85 %, Tata TeleservicesBSE 2.15 % and Sistema. 

A report by brokerage firm CLSA on the subscriber data released for May showed that 80% of Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio’s active subscriber additions came from smaller operators while the balance has come from Vodafone India and Idea CellularBSE 9.35 %, the country’s second and third largest telcos. 

Active subscribers are logged onto to the network unlike those who buy SIM but do not use the network. 

Vodafone and Idea saw their active subscriber base decline by 0.1 million and 0.4 million, respectively, in the first two months of the fiscal while the dip for smaller operators stood at five million in the first two months of the new financial year, the CLSA report said.This compares with smaller telcos’ average monthly decline of 4.5 million in the quarter ended March.