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Indian Mobile Networks See Customer Base Shrink in August
Published on:
Three of India's largest mobile networks saw their subscriber bases fall for the first time as the price war between the companies slowed down and subscribers stopped signing up for multiple SIM-cards.
Citing industry estimates, the Times of India reported that Vodafone, Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular collectively lost 5 million customers in August. That compared to growth of 3.16 million customers in July and 4.42 million in June.
The decline in customer base is thought to be due to the relaxation of sign-up incentives by the networks, which in turn lead to fewer customers purchasing multiple SIM cards to take advantage of the special deals.
It is not the first month that India's total customer base shrank though - as in July RCom cut off all its inactive customers, leading to a 13% drop in its reported subscriber base.
"August's performance was not about de-activating customers, but reflected a decline in actual growth. With metros and other key regions getting saturated, there are not many genuine new customers left to attract." Jaideep Ghosh, partner, KPMG Advisory Services told The Times.
It is expected that the decline in subscribers will continue for a few more months as the networks shed inactive customers and slow multi-SIM sales. In the long run that will improve the industry profitability, but at the cost of several months of headlines about shrinking customer bases.
On the web: Times of India
Tags: [India]
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