SIM consolidation leads to high churn in Jan

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has released subscriber data for January 2023. Below are the key highlights:

• The industry-wide gross subscriber base remained flat month-on-month in Jan-23 at 1,143 million (flat in the last five months), mainly due to a continued drop in Vodafone Idea Ltd.’s subscriber base.  Surprisingly, despite weak gross subscriber adds, active subscribers increased by 3.9 million mnth-on-month to 1,025 million (versus 8.6 millio increase in Dec-22).
• Bharti Airtel Ltd. /Reliance Jio added 1 million/3 million subscribers month-on-month, whereas Vodafone Idea lost 0.5 million subscribers month-on-month.
• Total requests for mobile number portability have been consistently increasing, particularly in the last six months, validated by a higher churn and SIM consolidation. MNP requests in Jan-23 stood at 12.4 million (versus 12.5 million in Dec-22), representing 1.2% of total active subscribers (versus 0.9% in Jan-22).
• Industry-wide 4G subscriber adds stood at 6.2 million (versus 6.2 million in Dec 22), below the average 8-10 million adds seen last year. The total subscriber count has increased to 805 million. Bharti Airtel added 2.8 million subscribers, higher than RJio’s 1.7 million and Vodafone Idea’s 1.1 million.

For report, https://www.communicationstoday.co.in/sim-consolidation-leads-to-high-churn-market-share-shift/

Bloomberg