Well known telecom operators, Airtel, Idea and Vodafone are about to report regarding the subscriber loss undergone by them which is about 5 million for the month of August. Reliance Communication, for the month of July, reported saying that it underwent about 20 million less subscribers in comparison to its subscribers in the month of June. According to the company, this made way for a similar reduction of the industry’s total subscriber base. The details are discussed below.
Rajan Mathew, the director general of the COAI (operator association), said, “Yes it is true that Airtel, Idea and Vodafone have reported close to 5 million less number of subscribers compared to the July figure. However, this is basically a result of removing inactive subscribers from their list. There is a lot of pressure from the department of telecom to de-list inactive subscribers so that the numbers can be allocated to someone else, given the shortage of numbers.”
Airtel, Idea and Vodafone have been reporting nearly about 90% of active subscribers and a bit of subtraction were necessary for these operators as other operators have less than 66% active subscribers. Therefore, a good number of negative figures are likely to be witnessed in this month according to TRAI as there are nearly 215 million inactive customers.
A rapid slowdown has been seen and hence the subtraction of inactive customers is bring an improvement in the efficiency and will also reduce spending. The total expenditure results as a lot even if operators expend less than a Rupee/month on the maintenance of an inactive customer. While Airtel, Idea and Vodafone are expected to report negative figures, players such as RCom, Tata Teleservices, MTS, Uninor, BSNL and MTNL may be also reporting something alike.