April MNP data underlines rising competition as Airtel, Jio vie for Vodafone Idea users

Mumbai: Elevated mobile number portability (MNP) requests in the sector for almost a year now indicate rising competition, accelerated by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel’s 5G push, and could lead to higher sales and marketing costs, analysts said.

Vodafone Idea’s struggle to retain subscribers, especially 3G/4G users, means that the telco’s situation continues to be dire, and a significant fund infusion at the earliest is paramount for it to remain competitive, they added while analysing the telecom subscriber data for the month of April 2023 put out by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Wednesday.