MUMBAI: In the wake of increasing mobile penetration in the country, the total telecom subscriber base in India fell by 0.26 per cent to 893.15 million at the end of January 2013 from 895.51 mn at the end of December 2012, according to the Telecom Regularity Authority of India (Trai).
The fall in two million subscribers was stated to be due to ‘large scale disconnections of inactive SIM cards by some of the service providers.’ The overall tele-density also decreased to 73.07 in January from 73.34 a month earlier.
Trai also reported a 0.24 per cent fall in the total wireless subscriber or mobile phone user base, which declined to 862.62 mn at the end of January 2013, from 864.72 mn at the end of December 2012. The decline was attributed to large scale disconnection by some of the service providers.
Related Post
Private operators hold 87.78 per cent of the mobile market share based on subscriber base, while state-owned companies like BSNL and MTNL hold a 12.22 per cent share of the market.
Amongst the operators, Tata Teleservices lost out 1.87 mn users during the month. Its user base is now reduced to 67.68 mn at the end of January 2013.
Aircel followed it up with a loss of 1.77 mn subscribers, while Uninor lost 1.40 mn users. Their user base now stands at 61.57 mn and 40.11 mn respectively.
Videocon and Sistema Shyam Teleservices reported a loss of 1.38 mn and over 520,000 mn subscribers, respectively.
On the other hand, Idea Cellular added 2.45 mn subscribers which were stated as the maximum amongst operators during the month, to take its user base to 116.39 mn. Other operators like Airtel added 2.28 mn new users to take its base to 184.19 mn.
State run BSNL also added 0.31 mn, while Vodafone added 0.22 mn new subscribers and their user base now stands at 100.24 mn and 147.70 mn respectively.
The report also stated that the wireline subscriber base declined from 30.79 mn at the end of December 2012 to 30.52 mn at the end of January 2013. BSNL and MTNL hold a share of 79.34 per cent of the fixed-line market.
Trai said, “During January, the share of urban wireless subscribers has decreased from 61.65 per cent to 61.31 per cent, whereas the share of rural wireless subscribers has increased from 38.35 per cent to 38.69 per cent.”
It added that the overall wireless tele-density in the country has reached 70.57 at the end of January.
The broadband subscriber base also witnessed an increase of 0.24 per cent to 15.01 mn from 14.98 mn a month earlier. The top five ISPs in terms of market share based on subscriber base are BSNL (9.93 mn), Bharti Airtel (1.39 mn), MTNL (1.09 mn), Hathway (0.37 mn) and You Broadband (0.30 mn).
As per the report, Mobile Number Portability requests also increased from 80.06 mn subscribers at the end of December 2012 to 84.26 mn at the end of January 2013. In the month of January 2013 alone,Trai reported 4.20 mn requests for MNP.
