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Bharti Airtel's Net Subscriber Additions Fall 73% In October: TRAI

Bharti Airtel continued to lead in active subscriber tally, with over 99% active subscribers.

<div class="paragraphs"><p>A Bharti Airtel Ltd. store in Mumbai. (Photo: NDTV Profit)</p></div>
A Bharti Airtel Ltd. store in Mumbai. (Photo: NDTV Profit)

Bharti Airtel Ltd.'s net subscriber additions dropped substantially in October, even as Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. continues to gain, albeit at a slower pace.

The Sunil Bharti Mittal-backed telecom company added only 3.52 lakh wireless subscribers in October, as compared with an addition of 13.2 lakh in September, which is nearly 73% lower.

Reliance Jio added 31.59 lakh wireless subscribers in October, as against 34.75 lakh in the previous month.

The combined mobile connection additions fell nearly 48.4% from September to October-end to 8.31 lakh, according to TRAI data.

Vodafone Idea Ltd. and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. maintained their losing streak.

The Aditya Birla-backed telecom company lost 20.44 lakh wireless subscribers, as compared with a loss of 23.26 lakh in September. BSNL lost only 6.31 lakh wireless subscribers, as against 23.26 lakh in the previous month.

Bharti Airtel continued to lead in active subscriber tally, with over 99% active subscribers. Jio's active subscribers fell to 93.31% in October as against 93.57% in the previous month.

As many as 1.27 crore subscribers submitted their requests for mobile number portability in October. With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 89 crore at the end of September to 90.28 crore at the end of October, since its implementation.