Active mobile phone users down 0.6 million in June 2023: Trai data
telecom industry saw overall active subscribers decline by 0.6 million in June after six consecutive quarters of additions, dragged by Vodafone Idea's (VIL) highest loss of active subscribers — 2.5 million — in 10 months.
This, analysts said, indicated continued market share shifts to stronger rivals Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, both having added active subscribers.
VIL’s accelerated active user loss also means that the market is fast moving towards a duopoly, they added.
“Industry’s active subs fell by 0.6 million in June 2023, led by decline of 2.5 million/0.5 million for VIL/BSNL,” analysts from JM Financial said.
According to subscriber data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) for the month of June, Reliance Jio added 2.3 million active users while Bharti Airtel’s additions were muted at 0.1 million.
“VIL's 2.5 million active subscriber decline was at a 10-month high indicating continued market share shifts towards Bharti/Jio,” analysts from Jefferies noted.
While Airtel’s market share of active users was stable at 35.7% at June end, Jio’s share grew 25 basis points (bps) 39.7% even as Vodafone Idea’s slipped 23 bps to 19.4%, analysts said.
Even though the Jio and Airtel saw additions to their active user base, the pace of growth was slower as compared to the average growth over the past six months.
“Bharti Airtel added 0.1 million net subs (versus 2.3 million average additions over the previous six months) and RJio 2.4 million (versus 4 million average additions over the previous six months),” Morgan Stanley analysts noted in their report.
The silver lining for Vodafone Idea was an increase in its mobile broadband (MBB) or 3G/4G subscriber base by 1.3 million after seeing a decline on
