NEW DELHI, Feb 17: The mobile user count in India fell by staggering 1.28 crore in December 2021 compared to the previous month, with Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea suffering subscriber losses, even as Bharti Airtel added customers, Trai data showed on Thursday.
Loss of mobile subscribers by Jio (1.29 crore users in the month) weighed in heavily on the headline numbers, and India’s total wireless subscriber base tanked to 115.46 crore in December from 116.74 crore in November.
Industry experts blamed the December showing on SIM consolidation by users.
According to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority India (Trai), Reliance Jio lost about 1.29 crore wireless subscribers, and that pulled down its mobile subscriber tally to 41.57 crore in December 2021.
Vodafone Idea lost 16.14 lakh mobile subscribers, and its base stood at 26.55 crore in December 2021.
In contrast, Airtel gained 4.75 lakh customers, ramping up its wireless user base to 35.57 crore, according to monthly subscriber data released by Trai.
“The wireless teledensity in India decreased from 85.18 per cent at the end of November 2021 to 84.17 per cent at the end of December 2021,” Trai said.
Wireless subscription in urban areas decreased to 63.33 crore at the end of December 2021, and that in rural areas also fell to 52.12 crore.
“Monthly decline rates of urban and rural wireless subscription were 0.80 per cent and 1.47 per cent respectively,” Trai said.
The share of urban and rural wireless subscribers in total number of wireless subscribers was 54.85 per cent and 45.15 per cent, respectively, at the end of December.
“As per the information received from 616 operators in December 2021 in comparison to 592 operator in November 2021, the total broadband subscribers decreased from 801.60 million at the end of November to 792.08 million at the end of December,” Trai said.
This translated into a monthly decline rate of 1.19 per cent.
Top-five service providers constituted 98.54 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of December.
“These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (420.28 million), Bharti Airtel (210.07 million), Vodafone Idea (122.62 million), BSNL (25.54 million) and Atria Convergence (2.01 million),” Trai monthly report said. (PTI)
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