Vodafone Idea (Vi), the third-largest telecom operator in India, lost around 3.5 million subscribers in October 2022. The data was published by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday. Vi lost 3,509,666 or 3.5 million users from its overall subscriber base during the month. Note that here we are talking about the wireless subscribers. In the wireless market share, Vi's share came down to 21.48% in October from 21.75% in September 2022. To recall, Vi lost over 4 million subscribers in September 2022. This means that in two months, the telco's subscriber base declined by around 7.5 million users.
Airtel Adds Wireless Subscribers
According to the TRAI data, Airtel and Jio have added wireless users. Airtel added 0.8 million users, while Jio added 1.4 million users. The market share for Jio and Airtel in the wireless subscribers' segment was 36.85% and 31.92% in Oct 2022. However, the metrics that actually matter more is the active users or VLR subscribers.
Vodafone Idea lost 0.47 million active users during the month. Its VLR or active user percentage in Oct was 86.20%. Jio added around 4.9 million active users during the month. Airtel, on the other hand, lost 0.96 million active users. The state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) lost 0.62 million active users.
Airtel Continues to Have Maximum Proportion of its Overall User Base Active
Airtel doesn't have many inactive users. The telco's VLR subscriber percentage stood at 98.56% in Oct which is much more than Jio's 91.93%. Telcos need more active users if they want to make money. For years now, Airtel has been leading in the area of having most of its user base active. Jio has been playing the catch game here and is trying to get its VLR subscriber percentage score up. Vodafone Idea needs to also cross at least the 90% mark in the VLR score as it would help the telco in reporting better average revenue per user (ARPU) figures.
