First-ever decline of 14.4% in new broadband subscribers during April-Feb'20

India added 117.8 million broadband subscribers during the April-February 2020 compared to net additions of 137.6 million subscribers in the first eleven months of fiscal year 2019. As a result, it contracted 14.4 per cent, charting unprecedented paths into negative territory for the first time in the last five years since the data was available for the matching periods. The incremental growth during the corresponding period in fiscal 2019 and 2018 stood at 19.1 per cent and 3.6 per cent, respectively. Broadband subscribers net additions during the April-Feb'17 jumped approximately 2.5 times from a year-ago period.

According to the latest data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the number of broadband subscribers in India increased from 673.40 million at the end of January, 2020 to 681.11 million by February, 2020 with a monthly growth rate of 1.15 per cent. On a yearly basis, this again, has translated into the slowest growth rate of 23.8 per cent over the last 60 months. Broadband subscribers recorded a year-on-year growth of 24.7 per cent in January.   

The top five service providers control 98.99 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of February, 2020. These included Reliance Jio Infocomm with 383.67 million subscribers, Bharti Airtel with 146.10 million subscribers, Vodafone Idea (118.25 million), BSNL (24.67 million) and Atria Convergence (1.56 million).

As on 29th February, 2020, the top five wired broadband service providers were BSNL with 8.11 million subscribers, Bharti Airtel (2.45 million), Atria Convergence Technologies (1.56 million), Hathway Cable & Datacom (0.94 million) and Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (0.84 million). The top five wireless broadband service providers were Reliance Jio Infocom with 382.83 million subscribers, Bharti Airtel with 143.65 million subscribers and 134.96 million subscribers when Vodafone Idea, BSNL and MTNL are put together.

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