India's big telcos are still losing customers after price rises

India's biggest telcos are still losing customers after they forced through price rises for all prepaid and postpaid tariffs in July.

Reliance Jio, India's largest service provider, lost 7.9 million customers, while Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea reported a loss of 1.4 million and 1.5 million users respectively, in September, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data.

That followed losses in August of 4 million customers by Jio, 2.4 million by Airtel and 1.8 by Vodafone Idea. In total, India lost 10.1 million subscribers in September, leaving it with 1.15 billion users. 

Jio has suffered the biggest impact because it has a larger share of low-spending subscribers on its network. SIM consolidation – whereby customers give up additional plans as prices go up – is another likely factor.

Private telcos' loss is BSNL's gain

Meanwhile, state-owned BSNL seems to be gaining at the expense of the private sector. It recorded an increase of 840,000 subscribers in September after picking up 2.5 million in August. It seems to have benefited from a decision not to copy its private-sector rivals and increase prices. 

In July, BSNL also announced significantly lower prices for its 4G plans than rival offers. This may have prompted customers on other networks to move to BSNL. 

That's clearly a positive development for BSNL, which has been losing market share for several years. In June, before bigger operators announced price rises, it lost 740,000 customers.

Customer losses after price rises are a feature of India's market. Jio previously lost 22 million customers between December 2021 and January 2022 after raising prices in November 2021. Vodafone Idea lost 2 million over the same period, with Airtel picking up about 1.1 million.

On the plus side, higher prices may be helping operators to boost average revenue per user (ARPU). Airtel's ARPU rose from 211 Indian rupees (US$2.49) in the quarter ending June 2024 to INR233 ($2.75) in the subsequent quarter. Similarly, Jio's ARPU grew from INR181.70 ($2.10) to INR195.1 ($2.30) over the same period.