Even as Reliance Jio subscriber base increased by nearly 6 million in September 2017, the country’s overall telecom user base dipped by 2.9 million. According to data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the churn can be attributed to the 2.38 million wireless connections in urban areas going off the grid. It should also be pointed out that there were several thousand disconnections in rural wireless and wireline networks. In fact, there were only three operators that added subscribers in September across India – Jio, BSNL and Airtel . The TRAI data shows there were 40,000 urban wireline disconnections, and 420,000 and 30,000 disconnections in rural wireless and wireline networks, respectively. The country’s total subscriber base as of September 2017 stands at 1.206 billion, with 1.183 billion wireless subscribers and 23.67 million wireline consumers. There were 5.49 million MNP (mobile number portability) requests acr...