Indian telecom operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea have continued their strategy to remove in-active mobile phone subscribers from their networks.
As a result, Vodafone Idea’s mobile phone customer base fell to 394.837013 million in March 2019 from 409.370681 million in Feb 2019.
The mobile phone subscriber base of Airtel dropped to 325.181266 million from 340.312808 million during one month.
BSNL’s mobile phone customer base decreased to 115.664576 million from 116.225169 million.
The mobile phone subscriber base of Reliance Jio increased to 306.724836 million as on 31 March 2019 from 297.234981 million in Feb 2019.
Removal of in-active subscribers will assist telecom operators to focus on active subscribers and enhance ARPU.
Vodafone Idea has 33.98 percent share in the Indian wireless market as compared with 27.99 percent for Airtel, 26.4 percent for Reliance Jio and 9.96 percent for BSNL. The latest trends indicate that Reliance Jio could become the second largest telecom operator in India in the next 1-2 quarters.
The latest TRAI report said 100.82 percent of Airtel’s 325.181266 customers are active on the network.
The report said 93.27 percent of Vodafone Idea’s 394.837013 million customers are active on their cellular network.
BSNL’s 57.56 percent of 115.664576 million phone customers are active.
The report said 84.04 percent of Reliance Jio customers are active on the 4G network in India.
TRAI said India’s wireless subscribers declined 1.85 percent to 1,161.81 million in March 2019 from 1,183.68 million in Feb 2019.
The wireless subscription in urban areas declined from 656.57 million in Feb to 650.49 million in March.
Rural wireless subscription declined from 527.11 million to 511.32 million during the month, TRAI said.
The number of broadband subscribers in India increased 2.37 percent to 563.31 million at the end of March 2019 from 550.24 million in February.
Reliance Jio Infocomm with 306.72 million, Airtel with 114.62 million, Vodafone Idea with 110.22 million, BSNL with 22.14 million and Tata Tele. Group with 2.10 million are the top broadband operators in India.
Top wired broadband service providers are BSNL with 9.21 million connections, Airtel with 2.36 million, Atria Convergence with 1.42 million, Hathway Cable & Datacom with 0.81 million and MTNL with 0.76 million connections in March 2019.
Top wireless broadband service providers are Reliance Jio with 306.72 million, Airtel with 112.26 million, Vodafone Idea with 110.20 million, BSNL with 12.93 million and Tata Teleservices with 1.68 million connections.
