Incumbent operators Bharti And Idea today hit out at operators that alleged that incumbent GSM operators have been reporting inflated customer numbers.

According to Bharti and Idea, the first ever Visitor Location Register (VLR) report from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), which captures the number of active customers on mobile networks, nails the canards and lies spread by a particular set of telecom operators falsely alleging that established and performing GSM operators have been reporting inflated customer numbers.

“The TRAI report exposes the double standards of these operators. Paradoxically, they are the ones who have inflated their own numbers’ as evidenced in the report of their VLR records establishing a very low active customer base both for their long established CDMA operations and the relatively new GSM operations,’ said a joint statement issued by the two companies.

The report says that Bharti’s active customer base was close to 90% while Idea’s was close to 88%.