New Delhi, (Samajweekly) Telecom operator Vodafone Idea lost over 8.33 lakh subscribers on a sequential basis in August, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data showed on Wednesday.
Vodafone Idea’s subscriber base went down by 8.33 lakh to over 27.10 crore users in August from around 27.19 users it had in July.
Similarly, state-run BSNL lost 61,778 connections in August, taking its subscriber base to 11.42 crore.
On the other hand, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel gained subscribers in the month under review. The data showed that Reliance Jio added over 6.49 lakh subscribers in August, taking its overall tally to 44.38 crore. Bharti Airtel gained over 1.38 lakh subscribers to take its overall subscriber base to 35.41 crore users.
“The subscribers of Bharti Airtel include the subscribers of Tata Teleservices Ltd,” TRAI said.
As per the data, the telecom industry lost around 1.12 lakh wireless subscribers in August.
The overall telecom subscriber base for wireless connections stood at over 118.67 crore in August, compared to 118.68 crore in July.
“Total wireless subscribers decreased from 1,186.84 million at the end of July to 1,186.72 million at the end of August, thereby registering a monthly decline rate of (-) 0.01 per cent,” TRAI said.
“Wireless subscription in urban areas increased from 650.10 million at the end of July to 650.39 million at the end of August. However, wireless subscription in rural areas decreased from 536.74 million to 536.33 million during the same period,” it added.
Also, TRAI recieved over a 1.12 crore subscriber requests for mobile number portability (MNP) in August.
“With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 616.87 million at the end of July to 628.15 million at the end of August, since the implementation of the MNP service,” TRAI said.
