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Vodafone-Idea’s (VIL) subscribers base continued to decline for the nine consecutive months this calendar year, losing 7.5 lakh mobile customers during September, bringing down its user tally to 22.75 crore.
State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) also recorded a decline of 23.26 lakh mobile subscribers during the month and closed with a subscriber base of 9.36 crore.
Reliance Jio added 34.7 lakh mobile subscribers during the month, maintaining its lead position in the Indian telecom market, the latest monthly data shared by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on Wednesday, adding that Bharti Airtel’s wireless subscriber tally also rose by 13.2 lakh in September.
Jio gained 34.75 lakh wireless subscribers in September, and its user base climbed to 44.92 crore during the month, while rival Airtel spruced up its mobile subscriber tally to 37.77 crore in September.
Wireless users
According to the TRAI data, the total wireless subscribers increased to 1,150.15 million at the end of September as compared to 1,148.43 million at the end of August, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of 0.15 per cent.
“Wireless subscription in urban areas increased from 629.39 million at the end of August to 630.17 million at the end of September and wireless subscription in rural areas also increased from 519.04 million to 519.99 million during the same period. Monthly growth rate of urban and rural wireless subscription was 0.12 per cent and 0.18 per cent respectively,” it said.
As on September 30, the private access service providers held 91.69 per cent market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU access service providers, had a market share of only 8.31 per cent, the TRAI report said.
Number portability
In terms of mobile number portability (MNP), a total of 12.65 million requests were received for MNP during September, and out of total 12.65 million new requests, 7.21 million requests received from Zone-I (Northern and Western India), and 5.44 million requests received from Zone-II (Southern and Eastern India).
The cumulative MNP requests increased from 877.43 million at the end of August to 890.08 million at the end of September, since the implementation of MNP in 2015.
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