New Delhi: Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. overtook its arch rivals Vodafone and Bharti Airtel to emerge as the second largest telecom operator in terms of users base by the end of July, a data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India highlighted on Tuesday. Statistically Jio added most number of subscribers in the past 17 months and stays ahead of its rivals despite some major consolidation happening in the sector. As per the TRAI data, Jio added around 1.7 crore subscribe in the month of July. In the month of June, Jio was at fourth position in the race which was headed by Bharti Airtel with a total subscriber base of 21.5 crore.

This substantial jump in Jio subscriber base represents most in tier II and III cities of the country and JioPhone buyers. Reports also states that almost 50 per cent of Jio’s subscriber addition is coming from JioPhone in the past two months. The jump in JioPhone usage took place when the telecom operator slashed the price of its new 4G feature phone from Rs 1,500 to Rs 500 in exchange for any old feature phone.

According to PTI, Vodafone, which was operated as an independent entity in July, could add over 6 lakh customers. Next in the list was Bharti Airtel which managed to add 3.13 customers followed by state-run BSNL that added 2.25 lakh customer and Idea Cellular with only 5,489 customers. The agency also reported that Tata Teleservices was biggest loser in July as it lost 23.57 lakh customers, followed by RCom and MTNL which lost 31,814 and 9,914 customers, respectively.

TRAI's monthly subscribers report also stated that the fixed line segment connections declined to 2.22 crore in July from 2.24 core in the month of June. In the broadband segment, the total subscriber based jumped to 46 crore in July compared to 44.7 crore in June. The mobile broadband connections alone contributed to 44.1 crore customers out of the total.