Around 3cr Reliance Jio subscribers were inactive in June, 2017

After the Happy New Year offer, Reliance Jio registered a spike in the wired and wireless services user base, but one-fourth of them are found inactive in the month of June.

As per the latest TRAI data, Reliance Jio had around 12.3 crore 4G subscribers at the end of June, 2017, but 25 percent of them were not active, which means almost over 3 crore subscribers were inactive during the month.

RJio has seen a constant decline in the active user base from 95 percent in September 2016 to 79 percent in December 2016 and now 75 percent in June 2017.

This could be due to having multiple SIMs  that most of the RJio subscribers are using it as a secondary SIM, or because of not upgrading to new plans once Jio’s free data offers ended in March. It seems there could be further increase in the inactive user base in the coming month also.

“It is expected to have higher proportion of inactive subscriber base in RJio’s case as they had lot of initial offers which might not have been churned-in or out,” said Thomas George, senior vice president and head of CyberMedia Research (CMR).

TRAI report says that out of the 118.6 crore wireless subscribers in India, 102.2 crore subscribers were active on the date of peak Visitor Location Register(VLR) in June 2017. The proportion of active wireless subscribers was approximately 86.17 percent of the total wireless subscriber base.”- This means that 86.17 per cent of the subscribers base was active in June.

Jio’s peak active usage was at 75.5 percent in June, which was lower than Idea Cellular, Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance Communications and Tata. Idea Cellular recorded 101.37 percent VLR subscribers, followed by Airtel with 96.57 percent and Vodafone with 93.45 per cent VLR subscribers.

TRAI measure the active wireless subscriber base by considering the peak VLR (Visitor Location Register) data for the month. VLR is a temporary database of the subscribers, who have roamed into the particular area, which it serves. If subscriber is switched-off or moved out of coverage area, or not reachable, etc., it can cause difference between subscriber number reported by the service providers based on Home Location Register (HLR) and numbers available in VLR.

However, despite a growing inactive user base, Reliance Jio still holds the largest market share(41.01 per cent) in 'wired and wireless' subscriptions.

On June 30, 2017, the top five Wireless Broadband Service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm (12.3 crore), followed by Bharti Airtel (5.3 crore), Vodafone (4.1 crore), Idea Cellular (2.6 crore) and Reliance Communications (1.3 crore).