Bharti Airtel and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) were the only telcos to see their wireless user base grow in October 2024. Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea (Vi) continued to see a decline in overall subscriber base. Since the time telcos have implemented a tariff hike, it is the first time any private telecom operator has added new consumers. Bharti Airtel added more users than BSNL. However, overall, the industry shed susbcribers as customers likely deactivated secondary SIM cards due to rising costs for using mobile plans.
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Subscriber Addition/Loss for Airtel, Jio, Vi, and BSNL in October 2024
According to the data published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Airtel added 1.92 million new users. BSNL added 0.50 million new users, while Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea lost 3.76 million and 1.97 million users, respectively. Overall, the industry lost 3.30 million susbcribers during October 2024.
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Active User Base
While Jio saw a decline in overall user base, its active user base went up. From 444.49 million users in the previous month, Jio's VLR or active user base touched 448.33 million in October 2024. Airtel's active user base went from 380.68 million to 383.40 million. For Vi, the active user base continued to go down from 179.52 million in the previous month to 178.80 million in October 2024. BSNL gained active users as its base went up from 54.77 million to 55.72 million.
With this, Reliance Jio's 97.46% user base is now active, an improve from 95.84% in the previous month. Bharti Airtel continues to have the lead here with 99.48% of its user base active. With a higher active user base, Jio will certainly see an uptick in ARPU (average revenue per user) figure aided with the tariff hikes implemented in the previous quarter. For Vodafone Idea, the VLR percentage stood at 84.95% while BSNL's stood at 60.17%.
