Ahmedabad: With people who stop cellular connections and service problems because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Rural Gujarat sees a reduction of several 3.3 lakh telecommunications customers in April to June this year.
Reports of the latest performance indicators of the Indian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Trai), show that rural telecommunications customers in Gujarat fell from 2,788 crores to 2,755 crores from the January-March quarter to the April-June quarter.
Telecommunications operators say there are many expired connections and cannot be extended because of the restrictions of Covid-19 which applies because the second wave of Covid-19 cases in April and May.
“People in rural areas are looking for cost-effective plans and tend to switch more often from those in urban areas.
The total reduction of customers includes a SIM card that is not used or not updated and their connection is cut off,” said the telecommunications sector source.
The source said that a small number of people with several connections stopped one or more to reduce their expenses.
Industrial players also connect the decline in customer numbers to service constraints.
“The second wave of Covid-19 hits during April to June.
Because of this, shops are still closed for a long time because of restrictions and people don’t dare to get connections that are activated or get new connections.
As a result, the total connection is down,” Source said.
Trends, according to Trai, are similar throughout the country.
“Rural telephone customers declined from 53.74 crore at the end of March 2021 to 53.64 Crore at the end of June 2021.
Tele-Density rustic also declined from 60.27% to 60.10% in this period,” said a report on performance indicators.