Vodafone Idea Has More than Half of Its Subscribers in Rural India

Not to take anything away from the people living in rural India, but the general consensus and the logic would suggest that people in the rural areas won’t spend as much as people in the urban cities will do in consuming mobile services.

Highlights

  • Vodafone Idea (Vi) has more than 50% or half of its subscriber base living in rural India.
  • What Vi needs right now is a higher ARPU.
  • Vi has over 139.61 million subscribers living in rural India.

Follow Us

Vodafone Idea

Vodafone Idea (Vi) has more than 50% or half of its subscriber base living in rural India. As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) report, Vi had 273.88 million subscribers at the end of the June 2021 quarter. The telco lost more than 10 million subscribers when compared with the previous quarter. However, on an interesting note, Vodafone Idea has 50.98% of its subscribers located in rural India. Even though the telco’s market share in rural subscribers is 26.02% which is lower than that of Airtel (32.01%) and Jio’s (34.77%), Vodafone Idea has a significant number of users living in the rural country.




This could mean two things. First, the rural subscribers love the telco’s network services, or the urban city users just don’t want to latch on to Vi’s networks.

Vodafone Idea ARPU Might be Affected Because of This

Not to take anything away from the people living in rural India, but the general consensus and the logic would suggest that people in the rural areas won’t spend as much as people in the urban cities will do in consuming mobile services. Because Vi’s half of the subscribers live in rural India, its average revenue per user (ARPU) might be dropping.

Further, a lot of 4G users in rural India might be using Vodafone Idea’s Rs 49 plan, which was discontinued in the September quarter. This could be a contributing factor for Vi losing subscribers in August 2021.

What Vi needs right now is a higher ARPU. The telco wouldn’t want to stick with low ARPU customers for long because of its bad cash flow position so far. While the relief measure will help, a tariff hike is required for Vi to sustain in the long term.

Vi has over 139.61 million subscribers living in rural India. Compared to this, Airtel has 171.73 million, and Jio has 186.56 million subscribers in the rural parts of the country.

Reported By

Editor in Chief

Tanay is someone with whom you can chill and talk about technology and life. A fitness enthusiast and cricketer, he loves to read and write.

Recent Comments

Rupesh :

Only 3500? These 5 states combined have 51744 towers. Means less than 5% per state. BSNL will never get level…

BSNL Installs 3,500 4G Towers Across 5 North Indian States:…

Faraz :

"BSNL plans to quickly upgrade 4G services to 5G by June 2024 " Is this a typo or a quote…

BSNL Installs 3,500 4G Towers Across 5 North Indian States:…

Faraz :

Population growth and growth of mobile users are more than that. And I was wondering Vi started gaining 4G customers…

Vodafone Idea Only Added 4 Million 4G Users in Four…

Girish Gowda :

Oh hell no. Airtel 4G is literally unusable aside from a few posh locations in the city. My mother has…

Spectrum Auction 2024: DoT Excludes 700 MHz Frequency Band, Get…

TheAndroidFreak :

They haven't deployed band 1 10Mhz at most of the places. Don't expect much of the speeds you mentioned. 3G…

Spectrum Auction 2024: DoT Excludes 700 MHz Frequency Band, Get…

Load More
Subscribe
Notify of
18 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments