India’s mobile user base down 3.7% in September: Trai

India’s mobile phone user base dipped 3.7% month-on-month in September, with Vodafone Idea continuing to lose subscribers and rivals Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel seeing a slowdown in new additions, data collated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India showed.

Cash-strapped Vodafone Idea lost over 4 million more subscribers in September to end with 249.1 million users, underlining its struggles to compete against rivals Jio and Airtel amid a 4G coverage gap being widened due to inadequate capex spending.

Consequently, the loss-making telco also lost wireless subscriber market share in September 2022, ending the month with 21.75% share, as compared to 22.03% in August.

Bharti Airtel grew its share to 31.80% (from 31.66%) and Jio, to 36.66% (from 36.48%), Trai data showed. However, subscriber additions for both Airtel and Jio slowed down compared to previous months, with additions of 0.41 million and 0.72 million subscribers, respectively. Jio ended the month with nearly 420 million users, while Airtel closed with 364.2 million.

Visitor Location Register, a key metric reflecting the number of active subscribers on a mobile network, indicated that 98.56% of the users were active for Airtel, 91.3% for Jio and 85.17% for Vi.

The Trai data also showed that India’s mobile user base dipped by 3.7% to 1.145 billion at the end of September from end-August, amid inflationary pressures, say analysts. Overall wireless teledensity also dipped from 83.27% in August to 82.94% in September.

Wireline subscribers, however, increased to 26.47 million in September compared to 25.97 million at the end of August. Jio consolidated its leadership position with an addition of 0.3 million users to take its base to 7.65 million. State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd lost 32,253 users to close the month with 7.1 million subscribers.