India had 86.77 million 4G subscribers in 2016: TRAI

India 4G subscriber base in 2016India had 86.77 million 4G subscribers in 2016, the latest statistics released by telecom regular TRAI on July 3, 2017 indicates.

The year 2016 marked the year of 4G launches. Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular were active in the Indian 4G market last year.

Reliance Jio claims it had 72.16 million 4G subscribers, which were added during the promotion campaign in 2016. The TRAI chart indicates that Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone had 14 million 4G subscribers on their LTE networks in 2016.

Internet growth

Total number of internet subscribers increased from 331.66 million to 391.50 million with yearly growth rate of 18.04 percent.

Wired Internet subscribers increased from 19.98 million to 21.51 million with yearly growth of 7.65 percent.

Wireless Internet subscribers increased from 311.68 million to 370 million with yearly growth rate of 18.71 percent.

Number of broadband subscribers increased from 136.53 million to 236.09 million.

The number of narrowband subscribers declined from 195.13 million  to 155.41 million.

TRAI said the top five service areas in terms of internet subscriptions (wired + wireless) are Maharashtra (32.6 million), Tamil Nadu including Chennai (30.72 million), Andhra Pradesh (30.15 million), U.P. (E) (25.74 million) and Karnataka (25.48 million).

Bharti Airtel holds 22.38 percent market share in wireless internet segment with 82.79 million subscribers followed by Reliance Jio (72.16 million) internet subscribers .

BSNL holds 61.13 percent market share in wired internet segment with 13.15 million subscribers, followed by Bharti with 2.04 million subscribers. Total number of wired internet subscriber is 21.51 million.