India's Private Telcos Lose 1 Cr Users, BSNL Gains

New Delhi: India's three private telecom majors -- Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea (Vi) and Reliance Jio -- have witnessed a staggering loss of over 1 crore customers in the month of September, while public sector telecom firm Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) gained some customers, adding over 8 lakh new subscribers in the same month.

It is, however, learnt that these three private telecom companies increased their mobile rates by 11-25 per cent in early July, resulting in a significant decline in their subscriber base. The September month marked one of the largest monthly drops for telecom giant Jio, over 79 lakhs subscribers in its customer base though it has been leading the industry in subscriber acquisition since its launch.

As per the latest report by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), Reliance Jio's customer base dipped sharply by over 79 lakh customers, followed by Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel with 15 lakh and 14 lakh customers, respectively. "Interestingly, defying industry trends, BSNL is the only telecom company which has gained new wireless customers by adding 8.5 lakh customers in September," Trai data showed.

When it comes to wireline subscribers, the data further showed that Reliance Jio has added 6,34,197 customers, followed by Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea with 98,637 and 25,017 customers, respectively. "However, state-run BSNL could not add up to its customer bases and lost out on 52,445 customers," the data showed.

The telecom watchdog's data comes on the heels of the recent Trai report on a 20 per cent decrease in complaints against unregistered telemarketers and spam calls, dropping from 1.89 lakh in August to 1.51 lakh in October 2024. This improvement followed Trai's directive in August to stop voice promotional calls from unregistered senders. The directive included a two-year blacklist for violators.