BSNL Loses More Subscribers Than Vodafone Idea As Telecom Duopoly Intensifies

India's telecom industry may be on its way to becoming a two-player market as two other operators increasingly fall out of favour with users.

Vodafone Idea Ltd. and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. lost a net 1.36 million and 1.48 million wireless subscribers in January 2023, respectively, according to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Friday. That compares with net additions of 1.69 million and 1.28 million by Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. and Bharti Airtel Ltd., respectively.

Airtel (32.27%) and Jio (37.28%) now control nearly 70% of India's mobile subscriber base, which barely grew in January. The country's wireless subscriber base increased by 0.01% over the previous month to 1,143 million in January 2023, out of which 89.66% or 1,024.81 million are active, according to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

The monthly growth rates in urban and rural areas were 0.02% and 0%, respectively. The overall wireless teledensity in India reduced from 82.57% as on Dec. 31, 2022, to 82.52% on Jan. 31, 2023.

A total of 12.40 million requests for mobile number portability were received in January.

Broadband

The broadband subscribers rose by 7 million to 839.18 million in January.

More users opted for Wi-fi in January, with the number of fixed wireless subscribers in India rising 3.67% sequentially to 1.17 million in January. The number of wired broadband subscribers increased by 2.23% to 33.11 million.

Jio accounted for more than 50% market share in the broadband space , with 434.02 million users,, followed by Airtel with 237.40 million, Vodafone Idea with 125.03 million, BSNL with 27.05 million and Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd. with 2.14 million.

New Tariff War

The latest TRAI data comes at a time when Airtel and Jio are galloping ahead with the rollout of 5G services in India, even as Vodafone Idea and BSNL are yet to start to play catch-up. Both Airtel and Jio are now wooing the lucrative postpaid users who may look to exit the laggards for want of a faster network. A tariff war, yet again, is afoot.