India Has 87 Million 4G Subscribers, Jio Alone Has 72 Million

The total number of 4G subscribers in the country on LTE technology has reached to 87 million by December 2016, of which Reliance Jio alone has acquired more than 72 million, representing almost 83% of total 4G subscribers base.

This means that the other 4G operators – Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone India – put together have around 15 million 4G subscribers by the end of December 2016.

This also means Jio represents 82.7% of India’s total 4G LTE market share leaving a meager 17.3% for all others.

It can be recalled that Bharti Airtel was the first operator to launch 4G services in the country, though in pockets, way back in 2012 and Reliance Jio launched its commercial service only in September 2016.

This data has been culled out from the freshly released report by country’s telecom regulator TRAI.

Though the country is seeing a huge surge in 4G subscriber addition in recent days, post Jio’s launch, with all the 4G operators putting up a war like situation to grab more customers, a dominant portion of India’s wireless internet users are still on 2G or 3G.

As per the TRAI report, there are a total of 370 million wireless internet users in the country. Of this, 2G internet users using GPRS or EDGE technologies constitute 152 million whereas 3G users with HSPA and WCDMA technologies constitute 128 million subscribers.

While internet on 2G has been more than a decade old and 3G became prevalent in last 5 years, 4G LTE is a recent phenomena with little over a year in service.

In the overall wireless internet segment, however, Bharti Airtel still holds the commanding position with 82.79 million users and a market share of 22.38%. Jio is closely following with 72.16 million wireless internet users and grabbed a market share of 19.5%.

The total number of wireless internet users of Vodafone India is 65.05% whereas the same of Idea Cellular has touched 48.6% by the end of December 2016.