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TRAI is set to investigate a discrepancy in the number of subscribers declared by the two telcos to regulators and investors
India’s biggest mobile network operators, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, have been asked to clarify the number of subscribers they have, by the Telecoms Regulatory Authority of India.
All Indian telcos supply two sets of quarterly figures on their total number of subscribers, one set to TRAI and one set to their investors.
However, TRAI noted that there was a discrepancy between the numbers submitted to them and the figures submitted to Vodafone Idea and Airtel’s investors.
“Our company recognises its subscribers based on certain usage threshold and accordingly such numbers are different from TRAI published telecom subscription data,” a spokesperson for Vodafone Idea told journalists from the Financial Express.
In its December 2018 figures, Bharti Airtel claimed that it had 340.25 million subscribers in the data it submitted to TRAI. However, in its quarterly results to investors, it declared that it had only 284.2 million subscribers.
Newly formed Vodafone Idea submitted figures of 394.83 million subscribers to TRAI in March 2019, however its quarterly report for the same period showed that it had only 334.1 million.
The regulator said that it would be asking both telcos to clarify their position shortly.
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