BSNL Adds New Active Subscribers for Two Months in a Row

 The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has just released the monthly performance report of the telcos for February 2022. From the report, it can be seen that BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) has added new active wireless subscribers in February.

While the overall subscriber base of BSNL has dipped, the telco has added new active subscribers during the month. The same is the case with Reliance Jio. Only Bharti Airtel’s overall wireless subscriber base grew in February 2022.

BSNL Added Active Wireless Users in Both January and February 2022

BSNL has added new active subscribers during the first two months of 2022. Refer to the table below to understand what’s been happening.

– Table for understanding the active subscriber addition/subtraction for the telcos (as per TRAI data). Note that the data in the table is mentioned in millions.

From the data above, one can see that BSNL has constantly been adding new wireless active subscribers despite the absence of 4G. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have also added new wireless active subscribers, which is a positive for both the telecom operators. Vodafone Idea (Vi) is the only telco that has constantly been losing active wireless subscribers.

Jio has made huge strides in improving its percentage of VLR (active) subscribers. From 87.64% VLR subscribers in December 2021, Jio has attained a figure of 94.01% VLR subscribers. During the same period, Airtel’s VLR subscriber percentage has made a marginal improvement from 98.01% to 98.08%.

Overall Subscriber Base Data for Jio, Airtel, BSNL, and Vi for February 2022

If seen on an overall basis, Reliance Jio has lost 3.66 million users in February 2022. During the same time, Airtel has added 1.59 million users to its subscriber base. Both Vi and BSNL’s overall subscriber base declined by 1.53 million and 0.11 million. MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited) lost 5,097 subscribers (0.0050 million).

Vodafone Idea needs to arrest subscriber loss and increase the average revenue per user (ARPU) figure further to be able to self-sustain in the ruthless telecom market of India.