State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) continued to add mobile subscribers for the third straight month on the back of users’ port-out from private telecom operators Jio, Airtel and Vodafone Idea after the recent tariff hikes.
In September, BSNL added 849,206 mobile users, taking its user base to 91.9 million, according to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). The company’s user additions, however, have slowed down compared with the 2.5 million it added in August and 2.9 million users it added in July.
Reliance Jio lost nearly 8 million mobile users, the maximum among all the telecom operators during the month, followed by Bharti Airtel’s loss of 1.4 million users, and Vodafone Idea’s 1.5 million users.
Jio’s subscriber loss in September was the highest in the last two-and-a-half years. As of September end, Jio’s mobile user base was at 463.8 million, while that of Airtel was at 383.5 million, and Vodafone Idea’s base was at 212.45 million.
Total user base fell by 10.1 million to 1.153 billion as of September end. Owing to the impact of SIM card consolidation after the recent tariff hikes, the fall in mobile subscribers was the maximum in nearly three years, according to the data.
Currently, Jio leads the mobile user market with a 40.2% share, followed by Bharti Airtel at 33.24%, Vodafone Idea at 18.4%, and BSNL at 7.98%.
In September, Trai received a total of 13.3 million requests for mobile number portability (MNP). “The cumulative MNP requests increased from 1.025 billion at the end of August to 1.039 billion at the end of September, since implementation of MNP,” Trai reported.
The total active user base across all telcos fell to 1.059 billion in September from 1.061 billion in August, the Trai data showed. Active users accounted for an approximately 91.9% of the total wireless subscriber base of 1.153 billion at the end of September.
BSNL added 1.17 million active subscribers, taking its active subscriber base to 54.6 million.
Jio’s active user base rose by 1.7 million to 444.5 million. Airtel lost 1.3 million active users, taking its total active user base to 380.7 million, according to the data.
Vodafone Idea lost 3.1 million active subscribers. The same reduced its total active user base to 179.5 million as of September end, Trai data showed.
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