Reliance Jio impact: Top 3 telcos lose 5 million users in August

For the first time, Airtel's subscriber base goes down

If declining profitability has been a concern for the telecom industry since Reliance Jio disrupted the market with deep discounts, now there’s much more to worry. The latest numbers show that the top three telcos—Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular—have together lost close to 5 million subscribers in August. 

This is the first time since the launch of Jio last year that Airtel’s user base has dipped. 

While Vodafone and Idea Cellular lost around 2.4 million and 2.8 million subscribers, respectively, market leader Bharti Airtel’s count dropped by 200,000  in August. 

Telecom experts, however, argue that in a market like