JOIN USReliance Communications has emerged as the biggest loser of its customer base and Vodafone the prime gainer with the introduction of mobile number portability facility, the government told Lok Sabha on Thursday.
According to data tabled by Minister of State for Communication Manoj Sinha, in reply to a question in the Lower House, about 2.74 crore customers opted out of Reliance Telecom, RCom GSM and RCom CDMA networks while the number of consumers subscribing to the telecom operator services remained at 1.56 crore.
This resulted in a net loss of about 1.18 crore customers to Reliance Communications, indicating the cumulative data on “actual port-in and port out” till May.
However, Reliance Jio, which is in testing stage, seems to have witnessed an encouraging response from customers as it witnessed as many as 1,284 subscribers porting in the service against a total of 580 subscribers porting out.
Vodafone became the prime gainer through the mobile number portability facility with the telecom operator witnessing over 4.7 crore subscribers porting in its services. The number of subscribers porting out stood at just about 48.65 lakh.
Airtel remains the second top beneficiary with about 3.82 crore customers opting for its services through the mobile number portability facility, followed by Idea with 1.8 crore subscribers.
Tata GSM and Tata CDMA have also suffered loss of their customers. While over 1.78 crore opted out from its service, a little over 1.5 crore customers ported in.
The government run MTNL GSM, BSNL GSM and BSNL CDMA also saw their subscribers opting out of other service providers. While over 4.41 lakh subscribers of MTNL GSM ported out, just a little more than 1.21 lakh consumers ported in for it. BSNL GSM saw close to eight lakh customers opting out of its service while the figure of customers porting in for it remained slightly over six lakh.
The minister told the Lok Sabha that the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) received a number of complaints about telecom operators rejecting their porting requests on various grounds after the mobile number portability facility was enforced in January 2011.