India’s active telecom subscriber base further slumped by 4.3 million in July to 1.013 billion. The user base in June has shrunk by 0.2 million. Otherwise, in the last six months, the user base expanded by 2.8 million.
“Industry-wide active sub-base dipped by 4.3mn MoM (vs dip of 0.2mn in Jun’22 and +2.8mn in past six months),” ICICI Securities said in a note a day after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) released subscriber data for July, noting a net expansion in user base by 0.6 million, with overall subscriber base rising to 1.148 billion.
TRAI data:
Reliance Jio’s net additions were 29.49 lakh subscribers in July 2022, and its total subscriber base was 41.59 crore.
Bharti Airtel added 5.13 lakh subscribers to its user base in July 2022, reckoning the total at 36.34 crore.
Vodafone Idea lost 15.42 lakh subscribers in July 2022, leaving its subscriber base at 25.51 crore.
As on 31 July 2022, the private market players ruled over 90.12% market share of the wireless subscribers, whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU companies, had the rest of 9.88% of the market share.
VLR Proportion:
The VLR proportion dropped 40 basis points month-on-month to 88.3% in July ’22, said Nomura Global Research.
“With the clean-up of the inactive subscriber base in FY22, R-Jio’s VLR proportion had improved to about 94% (from 78%), but it has been on a declining trend once again in FY23 and stood at 91.9% on July’22. However, R-Jio remains the VLR market leader with 37.7% (+6bp m-m, +270bp y-y) market share,” said analysts at Nomura Global Research.
Active subscribers, or visitor location register (VLR), is described by TRAI as the number of mobile users actively using a mobile network.
Despite the toned-down wireless and VLR trends, mobile broadband net additions maintained their previous three-month trend by notching 5.7 million to reach 777 million or 67.7% of wireless subscribers.
Broadband Subscribers:
The broadband subscriber base added 6.5 million to 807 million, 6 million below the August 2021 numbers.
According to a report from Morgan Stanley analysts, RJio has 53.5% of the market share for data subscribers as of July 2022, while Bharti Airtel held 27.9%, and Vodafone Idea had 15.8%.
In the last 12 months, on a reported data subscriber basis, the market share for Jio has shrunk to 53.5% vs 56.5% in July 2021, Bharti Airtel saw an expansion to 27.8% vs 25.3% in July 2021, and Vodafone Idea largely retained the market share at 15.9% vs 15.8% in July 2021.
(With Inputs From Various News Sources)