Gujarat, Andhra top circles for Jio; subscribers cross 24mn mark

NEW DELHI: Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh were Reliance Jio Infocomm’s top two telecom circles with 1.5 million and 1.2 million subscribers as on September 30, a Reliance Industries’ investor presentation showed.

The telco had a total of 16 million users at the end of September, which has now risen to well over 24 million, a company source said. “Subscriber addition distributed across the country—pan-India demand for services and ability of Jio to service demand,” the company said in the presentation. An email query to Jio on the latest subscriber numbers remained unanswered till press time Monday.

The presentation data showed Tamil Nadu had 1.1 million users while Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Bihar telecom circles had a million subscribers each, followed by Madhya Pradesh, UP East and UP west with 0.9 million users as on September 30.

Delhi and Haryana circles had 0.7 million users each, while Mumbai, Orissa, Kolkata and Kerala had 0.6 million users. Punjab had 0.8 million users.

West Bengal had 0.5 million users, followed by Assam with 0.3 million, Himachal Pradesh with 0.2 million, the north eastern circle with 0.1 million, and Jammu & Kashmir with 0.1million, the data showed.

Jio, which launched commercial services on September 5, has 4G coverage in 18,000 cities and over 2 lakh villages, covering over 70% of India’s population. It plans to extend the coverage to 90% of the population by next year.

The presentation said Jio is adding 90-95% subscribers through Aadhaar-based eKYC across 4,059 towns and cities.