According to latest Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) report on Telecom Subscription Data as on 31st January 2013, India has around 708 Million active mobile subscribers (GSM+CDMA) among the total wireless subscriber base of 862.62 million. Wireless subscriber (GSM, CDMA & FWP) base decreased from 864.72 million in December 2012 to 862.62 million at the end of January 2013, registering a monthly growth of –0.24%. Still telecom operators are cleaning up their subscribers list which are inactive for more than two months.
Idea Cellular added up the maximum of 2,453,038 mobile subscribers followed by Bharti Airtel with 2,286,675 mobile subscribers and Govt owned BSNL added 318,546 mobile subscribers. On the losing side Tata Teleservices which owns Tata Docomo lose around 1,876,108 mobile subscribers, closely followed by Aircel losing 1,775,993 mobile subscribers along with Unitech, Videocon, Sistema (MTS), Reliance, Quadrant and MTNL.
Bharti Airtel retained its top position with 21.35% market share followed by Vodafone taking the second spot with 17.12% share and Reliance Communication (RCOM) in the third place with 13.71% share closely followed by Idea cellular with 13.49%. Gujarat telecom circle reported the highest growth rate in adding mobile subscribers, followed by Rajasthan and Orissa. Kerala Telecom circle recorded a negative growth of around -3.9% followed by Tamilnadu, Cheenai and Jammu and Kashmir.
The number of telephone subscribers which include both landline and mobile subscribers in India decreased to 893.15 million at the end of January, 2013 from 895.51 million at the end of December 2012, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of -0.26%. Wireline subscriber base declined from 30.79 million at the end of December 2012 to 30.52 Million at the end of January 2013 recording a reduction of 0.27 million.
After the Supreme court rule that asked operators to port out their subscribers from telecom circles they don’t have active spectrum license, MNP request has been on rise. According to TRAI report by the end of January 2013 about 84.26 million subscribers have submitted their requests to different service providers for porting their mobile number. Karnataka (10.2 million) users topped in MNP request followed by Rajasthan (7.9 million) and Andhra Pradesh (7.6 million).
Broadband connections are on the rise in India, total subscribers base has increased from 14.98 million at the end of December 2012 to 15.01 million at the end of January 2013, there by showing a monthly growth of 0.24%. Broadband subscribers showed a yearly growth rate of 11.88% when taking account from January 2012 to January 2013. Govt owned BSNL with 9.93 million subscribers topped the market share followed by Bharti Airtel with 1.39million subscribers and MTNL with 1.09 million subscribers.
Source – TRAI January 2013 report