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Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd are the biggest losers due to the introduction of Mobile Number Portability.
According to the Department of Telecom, Reliance has lost more than 11.5 lakh subscribers and Tata Teleservices has seen 3.7 lakh subscribers leaving its network ever since MNP was introduced in November last year.
Biggest gainers
The biggest gainers are Idea Cellular, Vodafone and Bharti Airtel with net addition of 8.2 lakh, 7.1 lakh and 6.5 lakh subscribers respectively. State-run Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd lost 40,366 and 5,73,142 subscribers, respectively
Indian operators launched mobile number portability in Haryana on November 25 and extended it across the country on January 20. According to data from the telecommunications regulator, about 13 million subscribers have requested for a change in service providers until the end of June, when India had 851.7 million mobile-phone users.
The initial trend is surprising because it was widely believed that new players will gain the most due to MNP. However, it is the incumbent players who have gained so far. New players such as Uninor and Sistema Shyam have managed to get a few thousand subscribers due to MNP. Others such as Etisalat DB, Loop Mobile and Videocon have lost subscribers.
Gujarat tops
According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, maximum number of porting requests have come from Gujarat (12.98 lakh) followed by Maharashtra (10.32 lakh) till June 30. About 10.5 million subscribers had used MNP as on May 31.
Mr Anurag Prashar, President Corporate & Wireless, Customer Service, said, “RCom's strategy is not to drive number game through rotational churn but to focus only on customer quality and value. We have gained high value post-paid customers largely from the corporate and SME segments. Whereas the MNP churn has primarily resulted in porting out of low value pre-paid customers. Over 25 per cent customer porting out are at zero ARPU and 50 per cent at less than Rs 50 ARPU.”
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