Vodafone Idea Loses 4 Million Wireless Users in September: TRAI

Vodafone Idea (Vi), the third-largest telecom service provider in India, lost over 4 million subscribers in the month of September 2022. According to the latest TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) report published for the month of September 2022, the telco lost 4,011,544 subscribers during the month. At the same time, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel added 0.7 million (724,790) and 0.4 million (412,767) users. The state-run telecom operator, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), lost around 0.7 million (782,952) users. MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited), another state-run telco, lost 7,490 or 0.007 million users.

BSNL Loses Subscribers on Account of Missing 4G

BSNL is currently trying to roll out 4G in India and post that, we can expect some subscriber additions. Vodafone Idea (Vi) has been continuously losing subscribers despite providing PAN-India 4G service. The customers of the telco get inferior experience in the network coverage and other critical experience departments compared to what the users of Airtel and Jio get, suggests the latest Opensignal report for India.

Subscriber Addition Pace Slows Down

None of the telecom service providers (TSPs) in India added a million new users during the month, which suggests a slowdown in subscriber addition. Reliance Jio and Airtel’s wireless subscriber bases grew by 0.17% and 0.11%, respectively.

VLR or Active Subscriber (Wireless) Comparison Between August and September 2022

In August, Airtel had a total of 357.66 million active users; this figure went up to 358.99 million active users in September 2022. It means a growth of 1.33 million active users.

Jio had 384.63 million active users in August; in September, this figure went up to 386.08 million active users denoting a growth of 1.45 million active users.

Vodafone Idea had 214.29 million active users in August, but the numbers came down to 212.19 million active users, meaning a loss of 2.1 million active users.

Lastly, BSNL had 56.23 million active users in August, but for BSNL, too, the number of active users dropped to 56.09 million, denoting a loss of 0.14 million active users.