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The monthly data given by TRAI came as a surprise as state-owned BSNL showed net additions of about 8.5 lakh mobile users in September, while private telcos Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea collectively lost over one crore wireless subscribers.
In comparison to the previous month, Reliance Jio lost 79.69 lakh mobile subscribers in September, followed by Bharti Airtel (14.34 lakh users) and Vodafone Idea (15.53 lakh users).
8.49 lakh new customers joined Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd's (BSNL) wireless subscriber base. In September, Reliance Jio has 46.37 crore wireless subscribers, compared to 38.34 crore for Bharti Airtel. As of September 2024, Vodafone Idea had 21.24 crore wireless users.
With its September growth, BSNL now has 9.18 crore subscribers. It is important to note that in July, the three private telcos increased their mobile charges by 10–27%.
Robert Ravi, BSNL's chairman and managing director, recently ruled out a pricing hike in the near future, although the company chose not to follow the lead of its bigger competitors.
Spam blockers, automated SIM kiosks, and direct-to-device services are just a few of the new products and activities that BSNL recently introduced in an effort to aggressively attract new customers and regain market dominance.
With the exception of Odisha, all other service areas experienced a decrease in wireless customers in September 2024, according to TRAI subscriber data.
BSNL's July surge
On similar lines, in July, 2.9 million new mobile phone users joined Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) after private telecom operators like Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone Idea (Vi) hiked their rates a month earlier.
Beginning in early July, the new tariff plans offered by Jio, Airtel, and Vodafone Idea increased in price by 10–25%. Both Airtel and Jio have increased the entry-level prices for 5G plans by 46% and limited unrestricted 5G connectivity to plans that provide 2GB or more of data per day.
In terms of both wired and wireless broadband subscribers, Jio had 47.7 crore as of September 30, 2024, followed by Bharti Airtel (28.5 crore) and Vodafone India (12.6 crore). With 3.7 crore subscribers, BSNL ranked fourth on that list.
By September 2024, India had 1,153.72 million wireless customers overall, representing a monthly loss rate of 0.87%. In urban areas, the monthly fall rate for wireless subscriptions was 0.80%, while in rural areas, it was 0.95%.