Indian Telecom Industry Mobile Broadband (MBB) subscriber adds stood at 7.7m in Feb 2020 (v/s 11.5m in Jan 20) to reach 661 million. Currently, MBB subscribers account for 67% (+70bp MoM) of the total active subscribers in the market. The healthy subscriber addition is attributed to 1.3m/6.3m adds by Airtel / Jio.
Airtel added 1.3m MBB subscribers (4.4m in Dec’19), lower than the monthly average of 3–4m, to reach a total subscriber base of 144m. Its subscriber market share contracted to 21.7%.
Jio registered 6.3m MBB subscriber adds (v/s +6.6m in Jan’20), lower than the earlier monthly average of 8–9m, taking the total subscriber base to 383m. Jio market share stood at 57.9% (+30bp MoM). We believe a higher proportion of adds could be ascribed to low ARPU Jio phone subscribers.
Vodafone Idea MBB subscriber additions turned positive, but lagged behind at 0.3m after witnessing loss of 0.5m/1.4m in Jan’20/Dec’19, taking the total subscriber base to 118m. Still, its market share shrank 10bp MoM to 17.9%
