How are Indians staying connected during the lockdown? Check out details

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The coronavirus-induced lockdowns have led to higher dependence on digital tools, which has resulted in a massive boost for telecom service providers. The total wireless subscriber base increased to 1,167.71 million at the end of February 2021, with a monthly growth rate of 0.72%.

Addition of subscribers

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea added subscribers in February.

Region-wise trends

Mobile subscriptions in urban areas rose to 639.24 million at the end of February as compared to 633.27 million in January with a monthly growth rate of 0.94%, while in rural areas wireless subscriptions increased to 528.47 million during the same period from 526.15 million with the monthly growth rate of 0.44%.

The share of urban and rural subscribers in the total number of telephone subscribers at the end of February stood at 55.37%  and 44.63%, respectively. Mumbai showed maximum growth of 4.83% in its wireless subscriber base during the month.

Bihar and Himachal Pradesh showed negative growth in their wireless subscribers during the month of February-21 by -0.13% and -0.25% respectively. While Andhra Pradesh saw a nominal growth of just 0.03% in the month of February 2021 followed by Jammu and Kashmir with just 0.14% and Kolkata by just 0.17%.

Mobile number portability(MNP) and active users

In February, a total of 11.68 million new requests were received for MNP. Out of which 6.39 million requests received from northern and western India and 5.30 million requests received from Eastern and Western India. The highest number of requests have been received from Karnataka (about 47.53 million), followed by Maharashtra (about 46.05 million).

Bharti Airtel has the maximum proportion (97.47%) of its active wireless subscribers (VLR) as against its total wireless subscribers (HLR) on the date of peak VLR in the month of February-21 and MTNL has the minimum proportion of VLR (20.95%) of its HLR during the same period.

Reliance Jio’s wireless subscribers stood at 35.54%, the highest among all. While Bharti Airtel stood at 29.83%, but the growth in adding up more subscribers declined than January 2021. Also, Vodafone Idea is at 24.20% with the addition of 6.5 lakh subscribers after 15 months.

According to telecom expert Mahesh Uppal, Vodafone idea has high-quality customers in terms of revenue. Though the company has debt, it has been improving on its subscription, range of services, and business. It has a reasonable market share to give tough competition.