Vodafone Idea lost 4.95 million subscribers in August: Trai report

Reliance Jio added 8.44 million mobile phone subscribers in August, while Airtel and Vodafone Idea lost users, according to the latest Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) report.

Vodafone Idea lost 4.95 million subscribers in August and Bharti Airtel, country’s third-largest telecom operator in terms of wireless subscribers, lost 0.56 million customers. Now, Jio’s overall subscriber base stands at 348.2 million, Vodafone Idea at 375 million and Airtel at 327.9 million.

State-owned operators BSNL and MTNL lost 0.21 million and 6,701 subscribers, respectively. Total number of wireless subscribers increased by 2.68 million to 1.17 billion in August.

“As of August 31, the private access service providers held 89.78 per cent market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU access service providers, had a market share of only 10.22 per cent,” Trai said in its report.

Total subscribers, including wireless and wireline, grew by 2.54 per cent to 1.91 billion in August 2019. In urban areas, it grew at 2.78 per cent while in rural areas total subscribers fell by 0.24 per cent.

In August, 4.86 million requests were received for Mobile Number Portability (MNP), a facility to switch from one telecom operator to another without changing the number. With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 447.4 million at the end of July to 452.3 million in August-end.