The telecom industry’s ‘active’ subscriber base rose by nearly 2.5 million in October 2020 to touch about 961 million, and user additions benefitted from the vanishing impact of SIM consolidation triggered from the tariff hike, according to a latest report.

ICICI Securities, in its report crunching TRAI’s telecom subscription data, said Bharti Airtel’s active subscribers rose about three million to reach nearly 320 million in October 2020, “most of which was driven by total subscriber net adds, thus indicating improving quality of subscriber addition”.

According to the ICICI Securities’ report, Jio’s active subscribers rose 1.1 million to 319 million in October. It added that Vodafone Idea Ltd’s (VIL) active subscriber numbers fell 1.2 million resulting in an active subscriber base of about 260 million in October 2020. VIL’s total subscriber base shrunk by almost 2.7 million.