The total number of mobile phone users in the country fell 0.26 per cent to 904.23 million in October from 906.62 million a month ago.
“This decline is due to large-scale disconnections by some of the service providers,” said the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
The total number of telecom subscribers fell to 935.18 million from 937.70 million users, down 0.27 per cent.
The mobile number portability requests rose to 75.14 million as of October-end from 69.78 million as of September-end, while the total broadband user base rose to 14.81 million (14.68 million).
Bharti Airtel, the country’s largest operator by subscribers, added 4,91,570 new users, taking the total subscriber base to 186.41 million by the end of the month. GSM operator Vodafone India added 4,80,336 new subscribers, increasing its total base to 153.14 million.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) , the state-owned telecom operator, added 3,57,148 users and Idea Cellular added 2,39,348 new users. BSNL had a total of 99.99 million users, while that of Idea stood at 115.70 million.
Tata Teleservices lost more than 1.6 million users and Reliance Communications lost 844,735 users during the month.