Jio Finally Beats BSNL To Become #1 Broadband Company With 43 Lakh Users; Airtel At #3 Now

Reliance Jio has gained leadership in India’s home broadband turf after a close fight with BSNL spanning several months.

Bharti Airtel has been relegated to the third spot.

Jio added 190,000 JioFibre customers in November 2021, taking its fixed broadband user base to 4.34 million.

BSNL’s Reign Ends

BSNL had continually dominated the segment since its inception about 20 years ago.

In fact, it had 8.69 million wired broadband customers in September 2019- when JioFiber began its services.

BSNL’s count is now less than half of what it was as of November 2021.

The Top 3

Jio is now India’s No 1 wired broadband operator, a feat accomplished after just 2 years since commercial launch.

BSNL is at second with 4.2 million users, a decline from 4.72 million in October. 

It is followed by Airtel with 4.08 million.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data shows that Jio had overtaken Airtel in the home broadband users count last August and maintained its lead thereafter.

Why BSNL Lost

However, it was still behind BSNL till October 2021.

Jio managed to take the lead, breaking BSNL’s hold after the state-run telco lost home broadband customers in November.

It succumbed to unrelenting competition from both private carriers in the fibre-based wired broadband services market.

Market Share

Airtel added 100,000 home broadband users in November.

Jio stands at the top with home broadband subscriber market share of 17.8% end-November.

In comparison, BSNL’s market share is 17.2% and Airtel’s 16.7%.

Active Users

Despite its position, Airtel added the most number of active mobile users among the rest in November 2021.

It added 1.8 million active users, taking its active user base as of November to 348 million.

With this, it made up for the impact of sharp hikes in base prepaid tariffs it introduced around late-July.

Jio retained its market leadership on the overall active user base and active user share scores.

It added 1.1 million active users, making its active user base the highest at 360 million.

Top 5 Wired Broadband Players

The country’s total number of broadband subscribers grew to 801.6 million in November, up from 798.95 million in October.

TRAI reported that the top five service providers accounted for 98.68% market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of November.

As of November-end, the top five wired broadband service providers in the country are:

• Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (4.34 million)
• BSNL (4.20 million)
• Bharti Airtel (4.08 million)
• Atria Convergence Technologies or ACT (1.98 million) 
• Hathway Cable & Datacom (1.07 million)

Top 5 Wireless Broadband Players

Meanwhile, the top five wireless broadband service providers as of November were:

• Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (428.62 million)
• Bharti Airtel (206.02 million)
• Vodafone Idea (122.39 million)
• BSNL (19.41 million) 
• Tikona Infinet Ltd. (0.30 million)

Jio now controls over half of the market in terms of the number of subscribers – wired and wireless combined- at 54.01%.