Reliance Jio adds 3.5 million users in May, Vodafone Idea & Airtel lose big

Reliance Jio fared better than rivals Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea (Vi) in May, as the Mukesh Ambani-led company brought on board 3.5 million users in the month, revealed a recent data by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
 
Both Airtel and Vi lost 4.6 million and 4.3 million subscribers, respectively.
 
Industry experts believe the loss in user-base is mainly due to the lockdown and reverse migration to villages.
 
The inactive users are removed from the list of subscribers 30 days after non-payment of tariff.
 
Various states across the country were under lockdown in May to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The decision resulted in migrant labour, mainly in urban areas, moving back to rural areas. With the loss in livelihood, several workers are believed to have discontinued their mobile subscription. With states unlocking, industry experts believe mobile users will renew their subscription. 

In May, 7.28 million subscribers submitted their requests for mobile number portability (MNP). With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 586.33 million at the end of April to 593.61 million at the end of May, since the implementation of MNP.
 
The number of active wireless subscribers in May was 986.11 million. The total wireless subscribers decreased from 1,183.11 million at the end of April to 1,176.84 million at the end of May, thereby registering a monthly decline rate of 0.53 per cent.
 
Wireless subscriptions in urban areas decreased from 645.62 million at the end of April to 641.48 million at the end of May.
 
Wireless subscriptions in rural areas also decreased from 537.49 million to 535.36 million during the same period.
 
The monthly decline rates of urban and rural wireless subscription were 0.64 per cent and 0.40 per cent, respectively.
 
The wireless teledensity in India decreased from 86.78 per cent at the end of April to 86.25 per cent at the end of May.
 
The urban wireless teledensity decreased from 136.96 per cent at the end of April to 135.86 per cent at the end of May.
 
The rural teledensity also decreased from 60.26 per cent to 60 per cent during the same period.
 
The share of urban and rural wireless subscribers in the total number of wireless subscribers was 54.51 per cent and 45.49 per cent, respectively, at the end of May.
 
In April, there was a sharp decline in subscriber addition at merely 2.16 million, one-sixth of the user addition in March, which was at 13.25 million.
 
The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,201.20 million at the end of March to 1,203.47 million at the end of April, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.19 per cent.
 
Urban telephone subscriptions increased from 663.77 million at the end of March to 664.34 million at the end of April.
 
Rural subscriptions also increased from 537.42 million to 539.14 million during the same period.