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The Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) of India has shared data suggesting that the telecom subscriber base in India fell by 8.2 million in April.
Basing their observations on reports received from 342 operators, TRAI said the number of broadband subscribers dipped by over 11 million between March end and April end.
According to LiveMint, rural subscriber base increased marginally when the country was under strict lockdown, but the urban mobile subscriber base dropped by 9 million, as a large number of migrant workers exited urban areas.
Reliance Jio still managed to fare a little better than it’s rival companies. According to an Economic Times report, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea lost 5.26 million and 4.51 million customers respectively, while Reliance Jio still managed to add 1.57 million customers.
This however, was still far less than it’s approximately 4.7 million additions in March.
According to the TRAI report, the collated date suggests India’s mobile user base dipped by 8.23 million in the month of April.
The Economic Times report also says that the Visitor Location Register (VLR) indicates that 95.26 percent users were active for Airtel, 88.25 percent for Vodafone and 78.85% percent for Jio.
LiveMint, in it’s report, pointed out that owing to the lockdown, there weren’t enough open retail outlets, and many low-end subscribers found it difficult to recharge their mobile plans.
It also pushed the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) to write to various states urging them to issue instructions to mobile recharging retailers ‘to open their outlets for offering telecom services to the public’, and issue movement passes for staff managing such outlets.
According to LiveMint, on 3 May, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea also announced extension of validity on prepaid mobile plans for low-income customers.
(With inputs from LiveMint, Economic Times)
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