Just a month after achieving the milestone of 5 crore mobile connections in state in October, six telecom companies in Gujarat saw net losses in their customer base in November, 2011.
It happens rarely that more than two-three companies sees fall in their subscription base simultaneously. Industry experts believe that almost every company is willingly reducing its number of customers and have started acting tough. The telecom companies have started disconnecting those numbers which were inactive, since these connections were not adding to the companies’ revenues.
According to the subscription figures of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Association of United Telecom Service Providers of India (Auspi), the six telecom companies together witnessed net loss of 5.25 lakh connections in Gujarat in November 2011. Post Diwali festival in October, the net loss in subscription of Tata Teleservices was 1.66 lakh, followed by Reliance communications (1.35 lakh), Idea Cellular (1.16 lakh), Videocon (71,390), Aircel (35,539) and Bharti Airtel (248).
Secondly, mobile number portability (MNP), in which Gujarat leads the country, is also one of the reasons. l Turn to p11
