The Indian broadband industry saw a strong growth since the pandemic hit, and work-from-home became the new normal. As the market became more competitive with more players adding every quarter, big Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Airtel, Jio, and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) started offering cheaper broadband plans to the users. A few months back, Jio, Airtel, and BSNL launched new entry-level plans priced much lower than the 100 Mbps plans. The price range of the plans offered by the ISPs was almost the same, and that led to huge competition again. But it looks like the entry-level broadband plans haven’t served the service providers as well as they hoped it would.
Slower Than Expected Growth for Airtel and Jio’s Broadband Business
According to analysts, the growth rate of Airtel and Jio’s broadband business isn’t what was expected from them. Jio and Airtel added 0.18 million and 0.09 million broadband subscribers in the month of January 2021. It took the total subscriber base of fixed broadband connections for the companies to 2.3 million (Jio) and 2.9 million (Airtel). Overall, fixed broadband subscribers in the country grew by 0.38 million in January, taking the total number of such subscribers to 22.7 million. The numbers were up by 1.7% MoM and 18.8% YoY. ICICI Securities said that Airtel’s market share improved very slightly and became 12.8%, while Jio’s market share also increased to reach 9.9%. It is worth noting that BSNL is still the king in India when it comes to having the highest market share in the fixed broadband domain. The operator had 33% market share in January. However, it had declined substantially since September 2019, when it was 44.4%. Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio hold the second and third positions in terms of market share for fixed broadband connections in India. All the data was taken from Trai’s ‘Telecom Subscription Data Report’ for January 31, 2021.
