OLIGOPOLY IN THE INDIAN TELECOM SECTOR: A STUDY OF SUBSCRIBER TRENDS OF RELIANCE JIO, BHARTI AIRTEL AND VODAFONE IDEA

Over the last few years, the Indian telecom industry has been experiencing a large-scale structural change especially with the advent of Reliance Jio in 2016, which added to the intensity of competition and caused consolidation among service providers. This has caused the market structure to change to a few players having a majority in the market, that is, oligopolistic with Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea dominating in the market. This current paper discusses the oligopoly state of the Indian telecommunication industry through the analysis of annual trends of subscribers and competitive status of these leading telecommunication companies. The study is guided by the secondary data, which has been gathered in the form of reports of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), company publications, and other credible sources within the 20172025 years. Subscriber growth and market concentration are evaluated by the comparative analysis and graphical representation. The results indicate that Reliance Jio has experienced sudden and consistent growth, Bharti Airtel has demonstrated a consistent growth, and Vodafone Idea has been recording unrelenting subscriber reduction over the last few years. These trends show growing concentration of the markets and a high level of interdependence among the major firms which proves that an oligopolistic market structure does exist in the Indian telecom industry. The paper has pointed out the competition, regulation, and consumer welfare implications of this structure.