Reliance Jio powers ahead of its competitors as India’s broadband connections go past 800 million

• As per TRAI report, India has over 800million broadband connections.
• There was a massive growth in the month of July, with 14.78million new wireless subscribers.
• Broadband is currently defined as connections having download speeds over 512Kbps.

The total broadband connections in India exceeded 800 million according to a July report released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The number of subscribers increased from 792.78 million at the end of June to 808.6 million at the end of July this year.

According to the report, the growth of broadband subscribers was massive with almost 2% growth in one month. Most of the growth was seen in wireless subscriptions, as 14.78 million new users were added. Wired subscriptions increased by only 4,90,000 while fixed wireless services increased by over 83% in the month, from 6,50,000 subscriptions to over 1.19 million.

Wireless subscriptions include connectivity via phone and dongles while fixed connections include Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, Point-to-point Radio and VSAT. Interestingly, TRAI defines broadband as a connection offering download speeds of 512Kbps or more. And these subscriptions numbers are as per this definition.

However, TRAI has shared a recommendation in August to review the definition of broadband. As per the new recommendation, ‘basic broadband’ would be connections having download speeds between 2Mbps and less than 50Mbps. 'Fast broadband’ would be connections offering download speeds between 50Mbps to 300Mbps. ‘Super-fast broadband’ would be connections offering download speeds over 300Mbps.

The report further states that the top five service providers in the country had 98.77% market share of the total broadband subscribers, with Reliance Jio leading the way with 446.68 million subscribers. Airtel came in a distant second with 201.77 million subscribers and followed by Vodafone Idea with 123.97 million subscriptions.

The wired broadband service was led by BSNL with 5.83 million subscribers. Airtel and Reliance Jio followed it with 3.54 million and 3.47 million subscribers respectively. These numbers are likely to change once the new definition of broadband services is adopted.

Telecom service subscriptions exceed 1.2 billion

Along with broadband subscribers, India saw a growth in the number of telephone subscriptions in July 2021. The total number of subscribers went past 1.2 billion with the addition of 6.88 million subscribers in the month of July.

With this, the teledensity in the country took a leap and reached 88.51% — meaning there are 88.51 telephone subscriptions every 100 people. This number was, however, low in rural India with a teledensity of 60.33%.

The share of urban and rural subscribers in the total number of telephone subscribers was 55.46% and 44.54%, respectively.

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