Jio and Airtel added new subscribers in July; Vi, MTNL, BSNL lost: TRAI report

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released its latest subscription data report for July 2023. According to the report, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel added wireless subscribers, while Vodafone Idea (Vi), MTNL, and BSNL lost subscribers.

The private telecom service providers retained a 91.26 percent market share of the wireless subscribers as of July 31, 2023, whereas PSU telecom providers, BSNL and MTNL, had a market share of 8.74 percent.

As per the latest TRAI data, Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio added around 3.9 million new wireless subscribers in July, the most among all operators, followed by Bharti Airtel with 1.5 million. On the other hand, Vi, MTNL, and BSNL lost 1.3 million, 33,633, and 1.4 million wireless subscribers, respectively.

In July 2023, India had 1,146.25 million wireless subscribers, out of which 1046.41 million were active on the date of peak VLR. The active wireless subscriber rate was approximately 91.29 percent of the total wireless subscriber base.

Moreover, Bharti Airtel had the maximum proportion of 100.18 percent of its active wireless subscribers (VLR) against its total wireless subscribers (HLR) on the date of peak VLR in July 2023, while MTNL had the minimum proportion of 28.20 percent VLR against its HLR during the same period.

TRAI’s latest report also reveals that in July 2023, 11.77 million requests were received for Mobile Number Portability (MNP), out of which 6.70 million requests were received from Zone-I (northern and western India) and 5.07 million requests received from Zone-II (southern and eastern India).

Further, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 852.99 million at the end of June 2023 to 864.76 million at the end of July 2023 since the implementation of MNP, the report added.