Indian Mobile subscriber drop by 20 Million

 

For the first time the telecom subscriber base in the country has registered a decline. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) data, users base has dipped to 944.81 million in July from 965.52 million. The TRAI reveals that the decline is driven by the wireless segment, which saw a slump of 26.1 million. Reliance Communications saw a loss of 20.48 million users. RCom was followed by Tata Teleservices, which lost about 2.4 million customers. Uninor lost more than 1 million users, while Videocon 0.41 million. Loop Mobile and state-run MTNL lost around 0.15 million subscribers in July. RCom says removal of inactive users has caused the drop. "With an objective to release the substantial blocked resources of number series and in context of DoT's stringent guidelines on issuance of fresh numbers, RCom has decided to deactivate the inactive prepaid subscribers who have not had any usage in the last 60 days," a RCom spokesperson is quoted as saying. 

The biggest loss in user base came from Reliance Communications that lost 20.48 million users, followed by Tata Teleservices, Uninor, Videocon, Loop and state-run Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL). According to Trai's data, the total user base of the country declined by 20.71 million subscribers in July over June. Tata Teleservices lost 2.4 subscribers to have a total number of 77.8 million subscribers while Uninor lost 1.1 million subscribers. It has 44.5 million subscribers. Bharti Airtel, however, went ahead and added 1.5 million subscribers to have a total subscribers base of 188.8 million. Vodafone added 1.2 million users to have a total of 154.9 million users. Idea Cellular added 4,55,912 subscribers to have 117.6 users. State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) added 4,71,552 users to have 98.75 million users.