India added 8.5 million active mobile connections in October 2018, with Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio accounting for 94% of total active mobile connections in India, according to data released by the TRAI. The active connection data represents peak VLR (Visitor Location Register) data for the month. Some stats: – There were 1.0217 billion active connections in the month of October 2018 – Now, Airtel has 99.57% of connections active on its network – the highest among all telcos – Vodafone Idea has the second highest active connection base with 399.93 million, where Vodafone and Idea were having 94.47% and 92.52% active connections IMPORTANT: There’s likely to be a high amount of double or triple counting here, given the acquisition of Telenor and Tata Tele customers by Airtel. TRAI says the percentage of active connections is more than 100% due to in-roamers i.e. subscribers from other operators roaming in Airtel’s network. It’s possible that as per the current format of notifications, Airtel, Tata Tele and Telenor customers are roaming on each other’s networks. That should explain why Airtel can have more active connections than registered connections. The TRAI really ought to get this data cleaned up. In terms of the number of active connections, Vodafone Idea leads with 399.93 million connections, followed by Airtel at 340.19 million connections. Mobile Operator Leaderboard For October 2018 (Total Connections) - – Reliance Jio added 10.5 million connections, taking its connection base to 252.25 million. – BSNL added 363,991 connections, taking its connection…
