Vodafone pips Airtel in subscriber addition

In February, a month after mobile number portability was introduced, Vodafone Essar India’s third largest carrier by subscribers, has passed Bharti Airtel in monthly subscriber additions.

Vodafone added 3.6 million subscribers in February, up from 3.1 million additions in January.

In contrast, Airtel, the country’s largest mobile telephony operator added 3.2 million connections in February, down from the 3.3 million users it added the month before, according to industry body Cellular Operators Association of India.

Mobile number portability (MNP), or the facility to switch operators while maintaining one’s mobile number, was introduced nationwide late January.

In Haryana, where MNP was piloted initially, the facility has been available since November 25.

Among other operators that saw significant dips in their monthly subscriber addition was the state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, or BSNL.

BSNL added 1.51 million new subscriptions in the just concluded month, substantially lower than the 2.2 million additions it saw in January.

Similarly, MTNL’s subscriber addition declined to 25,786 users from 37,586 users it added in January.

According to data reported by the service providers and made public by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, or Trai, by the end of February about 3.8 million subscribers had requested porting their mobile number.

The maximum number of porting requests — 3.65 lakh - was in Gujarat followed by Karnataka - 3.18 lakh.

Even as there might be a spike in customer churn among operators, analysts argue, MNP is unlikely to be a game-changer.

 “Among the bigger gainers (from MNP) are Vodafone, Idea and Bharti in that order, with net port-ins of 190,000, 150,000 and 148,000, respectively,” Rumit Dugar and Udit Garg, telecom sector analysts with Mumbai-based brokerage Religare Capital Markets Ltd said in their March 9 report.

“We continue to maintain that MNP is unlikely to be a game-changer for the sector and incumbents are likely to gain at the margin.”