Airtel India says that it lost 5.7 crore mobile customers in December 2018

Telecom operator Bharti Airtel lost 5.7 crore mobile customers in December 2018, according to a company statement released Thursday.Its mobile customer base in India at the end of December 2018 stood at 28.42 crore.According to subscriber base report of telecom regulator TRAI, Airtel had 34.1 crore mobile customers at the end of November, implying the company lost around 5.7 crore customers in December.With this decline, the gap between Reliance Jio and Airtel customer base narrowed in December. Jio reported total mobile customer base of 28 crore by the end of December.[caption id="attachment_5423101" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Airtel logo pn a kirana shop.[/caption]Airtel, however, witnessed rise in 4G customer base. Overall, 4G customer base stood at 7.71 crore at the end of the quarter.Simultaneously, Bharti Airtel on 31 January 2019 also reported a 72 percent drop in consolidated net income for the three months ended December 2018 at about Rs 86 crore amid market turbulence triggered by cut-throat competition. The net income stood at Rs 306 crore in the same period of the previous year.Total revenue for the December 2018 quarter stood at Rs 20,519 crore, just 1 percent higher than the Rs 20,319 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year.From India operations, in particular, the loss (before exceptional items) stood at Rs 971.9 crore, compared to a net income of Rs 373.5 crore in the year-ago period.