Vodafone-Idea lost over four million subscribers in September 2022, according to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Tuesday. The operator's growth in subscribers also declined by 1.58 percent.
Reliance Jio gained the most number of subscribers with an addition of over 700,000 in the month of September, followed by Bharti Airtel at 412,767. One reason for this shift could be the coming of 5G and Vodafone-Idea not having a concrete timeline for the deployment of the service. Whereas, Jio and Airtel have already started the rollout in major cities.
“The number of telephone subscribers in India decreased from 1,175.08 million at the end of August to 1,171.92 million at the end of September, thereby showing a monthly decline rate of 0.27 percent. Urban telephone subscriptions increased from 651.07 million at the end of August to 651.61 million at the end of September. However, the rural subscription also decreased from 524.01 million to 520.30 million during the same period,” the report read.
The data also showed that Jio held the most market share at 36.66 percent, with Airtel in second place (31.80 percent), followed by Vodafone-Idea at 21.75 percent vs 22.8 percent, same time last year.
Vodafone-Idea lost 11 million subscribers in H1FY23.
As per TRAI's data, Jio's subscriber growth has been better than that of Airtel's for the sixth month in a row
| Adds Subs | April | May | June | July | Aug | Sept |
| Airtel | 816,016 | 1,027,881 | 793,132 | 513,472 | 326,205 | 412,767 |
| Jio | 1,682,094 | 3,111,417 | 4,223,252 | 2,949,389 | 3,281,699 | 724,790 |
“During the month of September, a total of 11.97 million requests were received for Mobile Number Portability (MNP). The cumulative MNP requests increased from 736.14 million at the end of August to 748.11 million at the end of September-22, since the implementation of MNP,” the report added.
At the end of September, Vodafone-Idea had a subscriber base of about 250 million subscribers. Reliance Jio stood at 420 million subscribers and Airtel was at 364 million.
Disclaimer: RIL, the promoter of Reliance Jio, also controls Network18, the parent company of CNBCTV18.com.
First Published: Nov 22, 2022 12:51 PM IST
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