State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) continued to add mobile subscribers for the second straight month with users’ porting out from the private telecom operators like Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone Idea, post recent tariff hikes by them.
In August, BSNL added 2.5 million mobile users, taking its user base to over 91 million, according to data by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). Infact, BSNL also led the addition of active users during the month. The telecom operator added nearly 4.1 million active subscribers — its record high — taking its active subscriber base to 53.5 million.
Reliance Jio lost 4 million mobile users, the maximum among all the telecom operators during the month, followed by Bharti Airtel’s loss of 2.4 million users, and Vodafone Idea’s 1.9 million users.
Notably, Jio’s subscriber loss in August was the highest in the last 2.5 years, whereas Airtel’s user loss was the highest in over three years.
As of August end, Jio’s mobile user base was at 471.7 million, while that of Airtel was at 384.9 million, and Vodafone Idea’s base was at 214 million.
Total user base fell by 5.7 million to 1.163 billion as of August end. Owing to the impact of SIM card consolidation post the recent tariff hikes, the fall in mobile subscribers was the maximum in 2.5 years, according to the data.
Currently, Jio leads the mobile user market with a 40.5% share, followed by Bharti Airtel at 33.1%, Vodafone Idea at 18.4%, and BSNL at 7.8%.
Last month, BSNL added a record high of 2.9 million users. Notably, the subscriber addition for BSNL came after a gap of 2.5 years.
In August, Trai received a total of 14.6 million requests for mobile number portability (MNP). “The cumulative MNP requests increased from 1.01 billion at the end of July 24 to 1.02 billion at the end of August 24, since implementation of MNP,” Trai reported.
The total active user base across all telecom operators reached 1.061 billion in August, up slightly from 1.059 billion in July, the Trai data showed. Active users accounted for approximately 91.2% of the total wireless subscriber base of 1.16 billion at the end of August.
Jio’s active user base rose by 2 million to 442.8 million. Airtel lost 1.65 million active users, taking its total active user base to 381.9 million, according to the data.
Vodafone Idea lost 2.6 million active subscribers. The same reduced its total active user base to 182.6 million as of August end, Trai data showed.
Regarding 4G/5G subscribers, the telecom operators added a net 2.1 million users in August, bringing the total 4G/5G subscriber base to 905.5 million.
