Jio overtakes Airtel to become India's No.2 telecom company

Jio overtakes Airtel to become India's No.2 telecom company
source: Google

Approximately two-and-a-half years after launching mobile phone services, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio has overtaken Bharti Airtel’s subscriber base to emerge as the second- largest telecom company in the country.

Reliance Jio has a customer base of 30.6 crore, now trails only Vodafone-Idea. Airtel has 28.4 crore subscribers while Vodafone- Idea had announced it had 38.7 crore subscriber in December 2018.

Jio’s aggressive entry into the telecom business had unshackled the financials of the industry completely. Vodafone India and Idea were forced to strike synergies and lower operating costs.

Jio, however, continues to be profitable in its operations and also had the highest adjusted gross revenue (AGR) in acce ss services amongst all the telecom companies in the December quarter.

Jio has been the strongest in terms of bagging internet customers, especially as it also offers mobile handsets bundled with its services.I n 2018, Jio captured 60% share of new 4G subscribers, and accounted for 65% of industry 4G customers as of end December 2018. Further, it carried 70% of 4G data traffic in 2018, and 61% of overall data traffic.