Telcos feel the heat as subscriber base dips by 4.3 million in July

India’s active telecom subscriber base dipped by 4.3 million in July to 1,013 million, a sharper dip compared to a dip of 0.2 million in June and a contrast to additions of 2.8 million in the past six months.  

Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio lost 1 million subscribers each, despite adding customers at the overall level, while Vodafone Idea lost 1.7 million, posing a key concern, said analysts at ICICI Securities.  

“Industry-wide active sub-base dipped by 4.3mn MoM (vs dip of 0.2mn in Jun’22 and +2.8mn in past six months),” the research firm said in a note a day after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) issued subscriber data for July showing a rise in net users by 0.6 million taking the overall subscriber base to 1.148 billion.  

The VLR proportion dipped 40 basis points month-on-month to 88.3% in July, Jul’22, Nomura Global Research said.  

Active subscribers, or visitor location register (VLR), is a temporary database of subscribers who have roamed in a particular area that an operator serves. Each base station is served by one VLR, hence the unique registration. The VLR data is calculated on the basis of active subs in VLR on the date of peak VLR of the particular month for which the data is being collected.  

“With the clean-up of the inactive subscriber base in FY22, R-Jio’s VLR proportion had improved to about 94% (from 78%), but it has been on declining trend once again in FY23 and stood at 91.9% in July 22. However, R-Jio remains the VLR market leader with 37.7% (+6bp m-m, +270bp y-y) market share,” said analysts at Nomura Global Research.  

Despite muted wireless and VLR trends, mobile broadband net adds were resilient at 5.7 million, similar to the trend over the past three months, to reach 777 million or 67.7% of wireless subscribers.  

Overall broadband subs inched up by 6.5 million to 807 million, still about 6 million below the August 2021 numbers or prior to the pre R-Jio’s subscriber clean-up levels.  

In terms of data subscriber market share, RJio had 53.5%, Bharti Airtel 27.9% and Vodafone Idea 15.8% as of July 2022, as per analysts at Morgan Stanley in a note.  

In the last 12 months on a reported data subscriber basis, market share for RJio has come down to 53.5% (vs.56.5% in July 2021), Bharti Airtel has improved its share to 27.8% (vs.25.3% in July 2021), and Vodafone Idea has largely maintained share at 15.9% (vs. 15.8% in July 2021).  

As of July 2022 Bharti Airtel has improved its data subscriber market share by 60 basis points in the calendar year, the firm said.