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State-owned telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has benefitted from recent tariff hikes by private telecom players including Bharti Airtel (AIrtel), Reliance Jio (RJio) and Vodafone-Idea (VIL) and added 2.5 million customers in August while other three have lost subscribers during the month.
This is the second consecutive month of subscriber growth for BSNL, the latest monthly data shared by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) indicated on Friday.
The data indicated that RJio lost the most number of subscribers in August by 4.01 million, while Airtel lost 2.4 million and VIL 1.8 million subscribers. The three telcos had increased their tariff plans by 11 to 25 per cent in July.
However, Robert Ravi, Chairman and Managing Director, BSNL, recently said “there is no need of any tariff hike” in the near future.
Meanwhile, the TRAI subscriber data indicated that the number of total telephone subscribers in India decreased to 1,200.07 million at the end of August, thereby showing a monthly decline rate of 0.42 per cent compared with 1,205.17 million at the end of July.
Total wireless subscribers decreased 1,163.83 million at the end of August, thereby registering a monthly decline rate of 0.49 per cent compared with 1,169.61 million in July.
Urban vs Rural
“Wireless subscription in urban areas decreased from 635.46 million at the end of July to 633.21 million at the end of August, and wireless subscription in rural areas also decreased from 534.15 million to 530.63 million during the same period. Monthly decline rate of urban and rural wireless subscription was 0.35 per cent and 0.66 per cent respectively,” TRAI said in its report.
The regulator said that 14.66 million subscribers submitted their requests for mobile number portability (MNP) in August.
It further said that Airtel has the highest number of machine-to-machine (M2M) cellular mobile connections of 28.41 million with a market share of 52.54 per cent as of August-end, followed by VIL, RJio and BSNL with market share of 27.18 per cent, 14.72 per cent and 5.56 per cent respectively. M2M cellular mobile connections are a way for devices to exchange information without human intervention using cellular networks.
The total number of M2M cellular mobile connections increased to 54.07 million at the end of August from 53.67 million in July, TRAI added.
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