Three months after mobile operators increased tariffs, the loss in subscribers has been stymied. While the wireless subscriber base continues to shrink, seeing a monthly decline rate of 0.32 per cent for February, the loss in users has declined in comparison to the previous month when the subscriber base declined 0.76 per cent in January. A key contributor to the subscriber decline was Reliance Jio, which saw a loss of nearly 4 million subscribers in February. Jio had lost more than 8 million users in January.

According to the monthly subscription data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Bharti Airtel’s subscriber additions nearly doubled month on month, adding nearly 1.5 million subscribers to their base. Vodafone Idea, on the other hand, lost 1.5 millions subscribers in the same period. 

Jio market share declines

Corresponding to this trend, Bharti Airtel made month-on-month gains in market share, (+0.3 per cent) to 27.2 per cent. Meanwhile, Jio saw its market share decline from 52.49 per cent in January to 52.02 per cent in February. 

Jio also saw its active wireless subscriber ratio improve by nearly 4 per cent month on month, from 90.68 per cent at the end of January to 94.01 per cent by the end of February. This means that Jio is likely to stop its subscriber cleanup soon, which will stem the subscriber loss for the market leader. 

For the industry overall, the proportion of active wireless subscribers was approximately 89.01 per cent of the total wireless subscriber base.

Monthly decline rates of urban and rural wireless subscriptions were 0.31 per cent and 0.34 per cent respectively. . Wireless subscriptions in urban areas decreased from 627.12 million at the end of January to 625.19 million at the end of February and wireless subscription in rural areas also decreased from 518.13 million to 516.34 million during the same period.

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