Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), a struggling Indian telecom operator, was the only company to add users in July 2024. Other telecom operators including MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited), Airtel, Vodafone Idea (Vi), and Jio lost users. This is due to tariff hikes. Vodafone Idea CEO Akshaya Moondra also recently said that one trend that they noticed was their customers porting out to BSNL. During the month, BSNL added 2.97 million customers.
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Reliance Jio lost 0.75 million wireless users, Airtel lost 1.6 million users, and Vi lost 1.4 million users. There wasn't much change in the total active user base of Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. BSNL's active user base rose from 46.58 million to 49.49 million. In the wireless market share segment, Reliance Jio had 40.68% of the share, Bharti Airtel had 33.12%, Vodafone Idea had 18.46%, and BSNL had 7.59% market share.
The private players had a 92.25% market share, while the public sector companies had a 7.75% market share. This is not surprising after the fact that the telcos raised tariffs. The operators said that they are not too worried about losing customers as basic SIM consolidation is expected after tariff hikes. Vodafone Idea also believes that the customers who went to BSNL will eventually come back after they don't get good enough 4G.
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It will be interesting to see if the same trend continues in August 2024 as well. BSNL has gained users after a long time, and what's interesting is that it was almost 3 million for the company. BSNL needs to roll out 4G fast to be able to retain these users. Otherwise, these users will eventually find their way back to the private companies. BSNL is eyeing to roll out 1 lakh 4G sites in India by mid-2025.
