Jio: The number of new mobile subscribers added by telecom companies Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel decreased in February. This comes as statistics from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) shows that the number of mobile subscribers overall decreased during the month, which was the greatest decline in the previous three months.
Increasing Crackdown on Fake SIM Cards
While Airtel added 0.98 million mobile subscribers in February, the lowest number in the previous three months, Jio added over 1 million, the lowest number in the previous five months. At the end of February, there were 1.141 billion mobile users worldwide, a 1.06 million decrease from the previous month.Experts claim that the decline in subscriber base can be attributable to consumers getting rid of their extra SIM card connections. Additionally, a decrease in subscriber base during the month is thought to be related to the Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) increased blocking of bogus SIM cards.
Vodafone Idea continues to struggle as Jio and Airtel outpace in market share gains
Analysts noted that Jio and Airtel are outpacing Vodafone Idea in the absence of fresh subscriber additions. Vodafone Idea lost almost 2 million mobile subscribers in February. For the past 23 months in a row, the telecom operator has been losing subscribers. In addition, the business lost 1.28 million 4G users in February, the largest decline in the previous 21 months. Reliance Jio increased its market share of wireless users from 37.28% in January to 37.41% as of the end of February. The corporation now has 427.18 million wireless subscribers in total. In contrast, Bharti Airtel increased its market share from 32.27% in January to 32.39%, while Vodafone Idea saw a decrease in share from 20.99% in January to 20.84%.
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Urban areas drive growth in mobile subscriber base as rural areas decline slightly in February, TRAI data shows
According to TRAI data, all service areas outside of Assam, Mumbai, Delhi, Rajasthan, North East, Kolkata, and Tamil Nadu saw a decrease in wireless subscribers in February. 11.17 million customers submitted their Mobile Number Portability (MNP) requests in February. This resulted in an increase in overall MNP requests from 796.84 million at the end of January to 808 million at the end of February, according to Trai. At the end of February, the wireless subscriber bases of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea were 369.87 million and 237.96 million, respectively. For the fourteenth month in a row, state-owned BSNL lost wireless subscribers. The business lost roughly 1.03 million wireless subscribers in February. At the end of February, BSNL had 104.09 million total subscribers. Overall mobile subscriber counts in rural areas decreased by 0.3 million to 515.60 million, while they increased by 0.76 million to 626.37 million in urban areas.
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Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel see increase in active users
Reliance Jio’s active users increased by around 3.15 million throughout the month, reaching 397.6 million. The company’s visitor location registration increased from 92.56% in January to 93.08% this month. Among the telecom companies, Bharti Airtel maintained its lead with a visitor location register subscriber rate of 99.25%. As of the end of February, the corporation had 367.09 million active members, an increase of 0.79 million from the previous month. For the eleventh consecutive month, Vodafone Idea’s overall active user base decreased in February. The number of active subscribers for Vodafone Idea decreased by 0.79 million to 208.34 million.
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