India’s largest mobile company Reliance Jio lost 1.9 crore wireless subscribers in September in an aberration caused by the service provider’s Covid19 initiatives, according to data provided by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). The data showed that the wireless telecom industry recorded a net decline in subscriber base of 2.07 crore over August across six players. During a post-earnings presentation last month, Reliance Jio Infocomm’s President Kiran Thomas had said: “During the peak of the second wave.we launched a lot of humanitarian initiatives giving voice minutes, etc to keep them (customers) on our network and keep the lifeline alive. Now two quarters later, we find that a large number of the people in the bottom of the pyramid have not been able to stay up to date with recharges. Of course, we have a policy of keeping them in our base for about 90 days. So effectively, the effect of these people stopping recharges two quarters before is now getting reflected in our subscriber count.”. Circle-wise, during September, Jio lost subscribers in all the regions except Bihar circle, where the net additions were marginal. Among Jio’s private sector rivals, Bharti Airtel posted net additions of 2.75 lakh subscribers, and Vodafone Idea continued its trend of decreasing subscribers numbers posting a decline of 10.78 lakh users during the month. “Having said that, this has zero negative impact on all the numbers that are mentioned before, this is more of an accounting correction that we are having to do,” Thomas had said. As of September 30, Reliance Jio had 42.48 crore wireless subscribers, followed by Bharti Airtel at 35.45 crore, and Vodafone Idea at 26.99 crore subscribers. In the month of August, Reliance Jio had reported net subscriber additions of 6.49 lakh, Bharti Airtel of 1.38 lakh, while Vodafone Idea had reported net decline of 8.34 lakh subscribers.
