The Indian mobile market shed 24.56 million mobile subscribers in 2019 due to a dive in numbers at Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel, latest data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) showed.

TRAI’s numbers showed the pair lost a collective 99.1 million subscribers, resulting in an overall decline of 2.1 per cent year-on-year to 1.15 billion at end-2019.

Vodafone Idea ended the year with 332.6 million subs, down 20.6 per cent, while Bharti Airtel’s base dropped 3.8 per cent decline to 327.3 million.

The overall decline came despite market leader Reliance Jio growing its numbers by 32.1 per cent (or 89.9 million) to 370 million. However, a slowdown in the operator’s growth in December 2019 to 82,300 additions does not augur well, and the overall market continued to drop during the month with 3.15 million users lost.

In mid-February Vodafone Idea reported a wider loss in its fiscal third quarter (calendar Q4 2019) after shedding 83.2 million mobile subscribers in 2019.