India lost 1.7 crore mobile subscribers in lockdown months: TRAI

he quantity of Wi-Fi (mobile) subscribers in India shrank by 1.7 crore to 114 crore in the months that had a nationwide lockdown — April to June — and was but to succeed in the pre-April degree even by the top of August, regardless of new additions reported in the 2 months after June. The decline in the June quarter is essentially as a result of of a dip in city subscribers — rural subscriptions really elevated. While rural subscriptions elevated in July additionally, they dipped in August. Urban customers elevated in each the months.

Neil Shah, VP (Analysis), Counterpoint Research, mentioned: “The major factor was the return of migrant workers to their hometowns and villages, a lot of them stopped recharging their mobiles. Also, the lockdown had an impact on many low-income group families whose mobile usage dipped resulting in a decline in subscription. However, I think that things would improve from September onwards as things get back to normal.”

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), the quantity of whole wi-fi subscribers decreased to 114 crore (1,140.71 million) on the finish of June from 115.7 crore (1,157.7 million) on the finish of March 2020.

The quarterly decline price was 1.47%, and the online decline recorded throughout the quarter was 1.7 crore (17.04 million) subscribers. Wireless teledensity in the nation decreased to 84.38 on the finish of June from 85.87 on the finish of March. Wireless teledensity is the quantity of connections per 100 folks.

Separata knowledge for the subsequent two months present that in July the quantity of subscribers marginally elevated to 114.4 crore (1,144.18 million) in July and additional jumped to 114.7 crore (1,147.92 million) in August. However, the quantity remains to be not comparable with pre-April ranges.

Sanchit Vir Gogoia, chief analyst & CEO, Greyhound Research, mentioned: “These months saw a lot of businesses shutting down which contributed to the reduction in numbers. Also, many people who earlier had multiple connections did away with additional SIMs and many who had taken additional connections only for data also switched to one network. All these reasons together saw a decline in numbers.”

Analysis of knowledge for the quarters earlier than March 2020 present that the quantity of subscribers had elevated marginally in the primary quarter of 2020 in comparison with the quarter ending December 2019, which had seen a decline of almost 2 crore subscribers, which specialists mentioned was as a result of of an ailing economic system.

Reliance Jio was the one operator so as to add extra subscribers in the June quarter, however its internet addition wasn’t sufficient to offset the subscribers lost by different massive gamers. Airtel, Vodafone and BSNL collectively reported a discount of greater than 2.6 crore subscribers — MTNL additionally noticed a decline — whereas Jio added one crore new subscribers.

Jio maintained the lead in market share, adopted by Airtel and Vodafone. In August 2020, Airtel, Jio and BSNL collectively added greater than 37 lakh new subscribers however Vodafone lost greater than 12 lakh connections.

Further, the general quantity of phone subscribers — wired and wi-fi — in India decreased from 117.7 crore (1,177.97 million) on the finish of March to 116 crore (1,160.52 million) on the finish of June. Subscribers in city areas decreased from 65.6 crore (656.46 million) on the finish of March to 63.6 crore (636.83 million) on the finish of June. ToI