Even though the overall wireless subscriber base in the country has declined by 9.37 million in January, primarily led by Reliance Jio, which lost 9.32 million users during the month, the active user base has been rising, indicating limited consolidation of SIMs due to the recent tariff hikes. According to analysts, the rising active subscriber base indicates that there is limited impact of tariff hikes on active users as mobile is an essential service. All the mobile operators had increased tariffs in December last year.
As per data shared by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), in January, the active subscriber base of the industry rose by 5.9 million month-on-month, led by 4.2 million additions by Reliance Jio and 1.3 million by Bharti Airtel. Vodafone Idea, though, lost around half a million active subscribers. In fact, the percentage of visitor location register (VLR) or active subscribers of Reliance Jio increased to over 90% for the first time since the company launched commercial services in September 2016. As of January, Bharti Airtel has the highest percentage of active subscribers at 98.18% on its network, followed by 90.68% of Jio and 86.30% of Vodafone Idea.
The decline in the overall wireless subscriber base is primarily because of weeding out of non-active users from the network. For instance, over the last six months, Jio has added 22 million active subscribers, due to which its active user share has risen above 90%. In the same period, the company has removed 59 million inactive subscribers from its network. “With its active subscriber share already at 91% and a mere 38 million more inactive subscribers left in its base, further subscriber clean-up is unlikely to continue for long,” Jefferies said in its report.
Active subscriber additions were driven by B circles that accounted for 75% of subscriber additions. Jio led on active subscriber additions across Metros/A/B-circles, while Bharti Airtel’s additions were driven by B and C circles. Vodafone Idea’s active subscriber losses seem to be moderating and were at the lowest since March 2021.
“The telecom industry has increased its focus on monetisation of services by raising tariffs and hiking the minimum cost to use mobile services. Despite the tariff hike, consumption slowdown and higher handset costs, the industry has been able to hold on to its active subscriber base month-on-month which we see as a positive indicator. We expect industry subscriber additions to remain muted in the near term as the market absorbs the recent tariff hike,” Kunal Vora of BNP Paribas said.
Another notable factor in the January subscriber numbers is fixed broadband additions. The number of fixed broadband subscribers for the industry grew by 220,000 to 26.65 million. Jio’s market share rose to 18.1% and net additions stood at 260,000, while Bharti Airtel’s market share was 16.2% with net additions of 130,000. State-run BSNL lost 170,000 subscribers and its market share was down to 14.6%.