Reliance Jio had the largest base of wireless broadband users with 102.84 million connections, accounting for 39.36% of total broadband connections in India (wired+wireless) as of February 2017, according to TRAI’s latest data (pdf). These are connections with download speed capability of more than 512 Kbps. As of the end of February 2017, Jio had 102.84 million broadband connections (39.36% of total), Airtel had 46.69 million (17.87%), Vodafone had 32.06 million (12.27%), Idea Cellular had 24.31 million (9.3%), and BSNL had 20.81 million (7.96%) connections. Thus, Jio had a broadband connection base that was: 2.2 times that of Airtel 3.2 times that of Vodafone 4.2 times that of Idea 1.8 times the combined broadband connection base of Idea and Vodafone (56.87 million), which are merging. 4.94 times that of BSNL. This TRAI data is from February, when Jio was still running a promotional scheme, and points towards non-paying connections only. Under that scheme, Jio had garnered more than 100 million connections, but the last available figure, when it started trying to convert these into paying connections, was that it had 72 million paid users in April. A more recent update on connections points towards 109 million paid+unpaid connections, which isn't indicative of paying connections. The top 5 broadband operators (wireless and wired) now own 86.76% of the market, up from 83.6% ownership as of February 2016. Competition in the industry is largely focused on the wireless or cellular segment and this has also impacted growth in the wired sector. The monthly growth rate of…
