The trend of SIM consolidation seen post the July 2024 tariff hike by private telecom operators, including Bharti Airtel (Airtel), Reliance Jio (Jio) and Vodafone-Idea (VIL), was limited largely to lower-end subscribers and has tapered down, analysts said on Friday.
Subscriber trends for all players are now expectedly reverting after the short-term distortion post the tariff hike. This led to BSNL registering net additions after a prolonged period of loss, and a spike in mobile number portability (MNP) in the interim.
BSNL’s November 2024 data showed a subscriber drop and monthly MNP requests also started to recede.
Airtel has reported net additions of 0.8 million subscribers in two months of the third quarter of 2025. It is expected to improve, going further. Jio saw a sharp subscriber fall in the first four months following the hike. With the clean-up now complete, it has witnessed a steady improvement in the momentum of net addition of subscribers.
Losses and gains
“Airtel and VIL have consistently raised entry-level voice tariffs (unlimited voice). It was at 27 per cent of entry-level data price in the second quarter 2020, which has risen to 77 per cent post the recent tariff hike. The first two months of third quarter 2025 saw Airtel gain 0.8 million subscribers. We expect further gains in December as the initial sticker shock of the hike abates,” Axis Capital said in a report.
The latest monthly subscribers data shared by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) also indicated that Jio added 1.21 million wireless subscribers in November 2024, pushing its mobile user tally to 461.2 million, while rivals Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and State-owned BSNL suffered subscriber losses.
Jio is the only operator which has added subscribers, after seeing a decline in the past four months. Airtel lost 11.4 lakh wireless subscribers in November as its mobile-user base slid to 38.4 crore. Similarly, VIL too suffered subscriber losses, with its mobile user count shrinking by 15 lakh users to 208 million customers.
BSNL, which had enjoyed subscriber gains over past few months, benefitting from tariff hikes of the private operators and SIM consolidation, however, logged subscriber loss of 3.4-lakh during the month to end at 92 million users, the latest TRAI data indicated.