Reliance Jio is not the preferred choice for MNP: Kotak

According to a study conducted by Kotak Institutional Equities, Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Jio is not the preferred choice for subscribers when it comes to the mobile number portability (MNP).

The study says that Jio, which has over 160 million users in the country, had 3.8 million who opted out at end-October 2017.

Jio has not been able to get a large number of its customers to stop spending completely with the incumbent telcos, the study further added.

Meanwhile, Kotak said that Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea Cellular's net port-ins remained in the positive zone in recent months, even as the gross port-outs pace has increased for them, Kotak said.

Bharti Airtel had been the leader in terms of MNO net adds in the market since Jio's launch in India. Airtel had cornered 9.1 million customers from other networks since September 2016, while Vodafone and Idea's net gains stood at 6 million and 5.4 million, respectively, it added.

However, a data by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India says that in the month of November 2017, 15.99 million subscribers submitted their requests for MNP. With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 314.99 million at the end of October-17 to 330.98 million at the end of November-17, since implementation.

In MNP Zone-I (Northern and Western India), the highest number of requests till date have been received in Rajasthan (about 27.54 million) followed by Gujarat (about 23.33 million).

In MNP Zone-II (Southern and Eastern India), the highest number of requests till date have been received in Karnataka (about 34.36 million) followed by Andhra Pradesh (about 29.21 million).