According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) subscriber tally for June; Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL) and Airtel lost about 48.2 lakh and 11.3 lakh users, respectively. Even Reliance Jio added nearly 45 lakh customers. The overall wireless subscriber base of India is now shrunk by 0.28 percent to 114 crores.
During the month, Jio gained 44.9 lakh subscribers; propping up its wireless customer base to 39.7 crores. While in the same month Bharti Airtel lost almost 11.3 lakh users in the mobile category, and its subscriber base stood at 31.6 crore subscribers. In June, 5.83 million subscribers submitted their request for mobile number portability.
A growth rate of nearly two percent is seen in the total number of broadband subscribers in India, it rose from 683.7 million (68.3 crore) at the end of May to 698.23 million (69.8 crore) at the end of June.
Top five service providers constituted 98.93 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of June, Trai said. “These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (398.31 million), Bharti Airtel (151.30 million), Vodafone Idea (116.45 million), BSNL (23 million)…,” it added.
This major loss in subscriber base will affect the telecom industry a lot. According to a lot of experts, Uncertainty on the AGR (adjusted gross revenue) matter, absolute liabilities on this, continuing losses, and cash flow pressures prevented network upgradation which impacted the quality of service (call drops, etc). These factors lead to subscribers moving out.