As per a report by Motilal Oswal, telecom tariff hikes from December 2019 have led to a decline in gross subscribers resulting in consolidation in the market.
The decline in active subscribers has increased by 3.5 million in December 2019 from 2.1 million in November 2019. Further, gross subscriber base declined by 3.2 million (month-on-month) to 1,151 million, as against the addition of 3-4 million in the recent past.
Bharti Airtel’s gross subscriber base stood flat and Jio added around 0.1 million subscribers. Whereas, Vodafone Idea witnessed a decline of 3.6 million gross subscribers, possibly due to customers discarding non-functional SIM cards post tariff hikes.
The trend comes on the back of interconnect usage charges (IUC) imposed by Jio in October 2019 and a price hike of around 25-30 per cent in December 2019.
