Mobile user base dips for third month straight, down 0.6 mn in Nov

Vodafone continues to lose subscribers, Airtel's additions at 6-month high, Jio retains the highest user base

The number of mobile phone users in India decreased by 0.6 million in November, marking the third straight month of decline, the latest data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) showed.

Users reduced by 1.82 million in October and 3.66 million in September when the number shrunk for the first time in seven months. Before that, the number of subscribers last dipped in February: by 3.7 million. In recent months, the number of users had increased by 1.08 million in August, 640,000 in July, and 1.89 million in June.

The decline in October was concentrated in urban areas, but November saw numbers falling in rural areas.

The number of users in cities rose by 1.42 million in November, after shrinking by 1.96 million in October and increasing by 500,000 in September. The number of subscribers in India's rural hinterland fell by 2 million.

Rural subscriptions had seen a see-saw over the past few months, after marginally rising by 140,000 in October, and declining by 3.71 million in September.

Voda Idea shrinks

The overall fall could be partly attributed to subscribers leaving Vodafone Idea, which saw its user base shrink by 1.8 million in November. The company lost 3.5 million and 4 million subscribers in the previous two months. It lost 1.8 million subscribers in June, 1.5 million in July and 1.9 million in August.

Reliance Jio continued to cement its lead in the Indian telecom market, gaining 1.4 million subscribers in November: the same number as in October, and up from a gain of 700,000 in September.

However, Jio's pace of adding new customers has slowed since August when it got 3.2 million of them. It had gained 2.94 million and 400,000 new subscribers in July and June.

Bharti Airtel's subscriber addition continued to pick up the pace. It added 1.05 million subscribers in November, up from 0.8 million subscriber additions in October, and 0.4 million additions in September, the data showed. It had added 300,000, 500,000, and 700,000 subscribers in the previous months of August, July, and June, respectively,

State-owned BSNL and MTNL lost 1.1 million and 4157 wireless customers, respectively.

Jio had the highest user base in the country, at 422.8 million as of November 30 followed by Airtel at 366.08 million, and Vodafone at 243.8 million.