A Worrying September for Telecom Sector as 20 Million Users Leave

On Monday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India released the Telecom Subscription Data for September. TRAI reported worrying numbers for the telecom sector as it records more than 20 million subscribers lost during the month.

Reliance Jio Sees Red, Airtel Marginally Improves

Overall, the telecom sector recorded a loss of over 20 million mobile subscribers or 1.74%.  Incidentally, Reliance Jio saw the brunt of the blow, accounting for over 19 million of them. This has become Jio's first customer churn in a very long time.

More worryingly, these users did not amount to significant gains for other telecom companies. Vodafone Idea recorded a loss of about 10.77 lakh users, while Bharti Airtel recorded a marginal gain of 0.274 million customers. Also, Airtel was the only telco that recorded any sort of growth in September.

The fact that most of the users lost by Jio did not go to either Airtel or Vi shows that these users just stopped using telecom services altogether. Incidentally, all 22 of the telecom sector circles recorded losses. Mumbai circle recorded as high as 6.49% of wireless customers gone.

In terms of market share, Jio still sits on the largest slice of the pie, accounting for 36.43% of wireless mobile subscribers. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea follow the market leader, with 30.40% and 23.15%, respectively. That represents 424.84 million users for Jio, 354.47 million for Airtel, and 269.99 million for Vi.

Interestingly, Jio managed to pip Airtel as the telco with the most active users, improving its active users. For September, Airtel still had the largest ratio of active users with 97.86%, however, in terms of numbers, Jio had the most active users with 355.37 million.

Telecom Sector Wobbles Again?

The latest report has marked September as the third month in 2021 to record an overall decline in telecom users. What's more, the telecom sector has lost wireless users for two months in a row; previously, August saw marginal losses of 1.1 lakh users, while May recorded 67 lakh users lost. Incidentally, before September, May was the only month in 2021 when the sector saw losses across all 22 telecom circles.

However, the telecom sector's losses can be attributed to a reduced instance of multiple connections. This also reflects on Jio's increased active users' ratio; the same went from 79% in August to 83% in September. Therefore, the decline should not prove to be much cause of worry for the telecom sector as a whole.