Reliance Jio saw 7.96 million users leave the telecom operator in September, data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) showed on Thursday. This was Jio’s third straight month of losing subscribers.
Jio’s subscriber loss has continued to accelerate since July, when the three private telecom operators—Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea (Vi)—implemented a broad-based hike in tariffs.
Cumulatively, Jio has lost 12.74 million users in the past three months or 2.6% of its total subscriber base of 476.52 million at June-end.
In September, Airtel lost 1.43 million users, lower than the 2.4 million user loss seen in July and June’s 1.69 million loss.
Airtel has lost 5.53 million subscribers over the past three months.
Vi lost 1.55 million users in September, lower than the 1.87 million and 1.41 million subscriber losses in August and July, respectively.
Vi had lost the most subscribers for two years until June, when it lost 0.86 million users.
Amid the churn in the market, BSNL continued to benefit.
After losing subscribers for two years, BSNL added 2.9 million and 2.53 million users in July and August, respectively. However, the pace of customer additions reduced to 0.84 million in September.
Notably, in the first week of July, Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea raised tariffs, but BSNL, which is in losses, did not.