With a subscriber base of 72.16 million, Reliance Jio has grabbed a lion's share, close to one-third market share of broadband service providers, as per the latest data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for the month of December 2016. This translates into a gain of 6.6 percentage points in its market share to 30.56 per cent, as compared to 23.9 per cent in the previous month.
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This came hard on Bharti Airtel, which was a market leader in wireless broadband services till October with 22.05 per cent market share --- but has seen a drop of over 3 percentage points since then.
Its market share currently stands at 18.45 per cent in this category. Vodafone equally bears the brunt with 3.6 percentage points decline in its market share since October.
Reliance Jio Infocomm commenced its wireless service in September 2016 with a market share of 8.7 per cent in broadband services and a subscriber base of 16.62 million. Its market share jumped to 16.45 per cent in October, followed by significant jumps of 23.9 per cent in November and 30.56 per cent in December 2016.
All thanks to the company's welcome offer' early September last year which gave users an access to free unlimited 4G data for the first three months. It further extended the free call and data offer till March 31 2017 after the promotional 90-day period expired on December 04, 2016.
With a subscriber base of 16.62 million in September, Reliance Jio saw a net addition of 19.6 million in October followed by net additions of 16.26 million in November and 20.28 million in December 2016.
The free data offer of Reliance Jio will end next month and with Vodafone-Idea merger on the cards, it remains to be seen how the market share dynamics will change.