Airtel, Vi records post tax customer loss, BSNL turns profitable only in July
The impact of the mobile service price hike was seen in July when Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea reported loss of customer base, resulting in an overall decline in telecom subscribers in the country.
Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have hiked their mobile service plan prices in the range of 10-27 percent in the first week of July.
Airtel and Vodafone Idea have more than doubled their entry-level mobile rates in the last 2-3 years to Rs 199 which comes with 28-day warranty.
State-owned BSNL was the only player to add new subscribers and led the market in terms of new customer additions, according to the monthly subscriber report released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Friday.
According to the report, BSNL added more than 2.94 million mobile subscribers in July.
Bharti Airtel lost 1.69 million mobile subscribers which was the highest among its peers. Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio lost 1.41 million and 758 thousand mobile subscribers, respectively.
Overall, the country’s mobile subscriber base declined slightly to 1,205.17 million in July from 1,205.64 million in June.
North East, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Mumbai, Kolkata, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Bihar, West Bengal, UP East, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh telecom circles have recorded a decline in the mobile customer base posting a rise in the prices of mobile services.
Wire lines or the fixed line segment increased nearly 1 percent to 35.56 million in July from 35.11 million in June.
Reliance Jio led the fixed line segment with the addition of over 480 thousand new subscribers.
It was followed by Bharti Airtel which added more than 136 thousand new subscribers, VMIPL 12,413, Vi 11,375, Tata Teleservices 3,971 and Quadrant added 12 new new customers.
BSNL has been a major failure in the category. The state-owned firm lost 134 thousand line customers and its concern lost 56,454 customers.
The broadband customer base in the country increased to 946.19 million at the end of July from 940.75 million in June.
The top five players account for 98.42 percent of the total broadband connections in the country.
Reliance Jio led the chart with 488.63 million broadband customers, Airtel 284.03 million, Vodafone Idea 126.72 million, BSNL 29.61 million and Atria Convergence 2.26 million.
Bharti Airtel led in mobile device-to-device connectivity with 28.46 million subscribers making the market share 53.02 percent.
It was followed by Vodafone Idea Limited, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited and BSNL with a market share of 27.71 percent, 13.68 percent and 5.58 percent respectively.
