India’s mobile subscriber base dropped during July from 965.52 million to 944.81 million, a decline of more than 20 million users. The figures, which were released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), represent the first ever decline in the country’s subscriber base.

The biggest drop in net subscriber numbers was reported by Reliance Communications which disconnected 20.48 million inactive prepaid users, followed by Tata Teleservices (2.4 million users), and Uninor (1.1 million users). Videocon, MTNL and Loop made smaller numbers of disconnections.

Some mobile operators did report gains during July led by Bharti Airtel with 1.5 million net additions and Vodafone India, which had 1.2 million net gains. BSNL, Idea, Aircel, Sistema and HFCL also reported net gains, albeit smaller ones.

India’s mobile operators are generally engaged in disconnection programmes, of which Reliance’s is a particularly large example. The operators are complying with changed definitions of whether a subscriber is active or not.