Telecom subscriber base drops 2.8% in December: TRAI

Share of urban wireless subscribers declined to 62.20% from 62.70%, share of rural subscribers increased to 37.80% in December 2012

The country’s telecom subscriber base declined by 2.82% to 895.51 million in December, from 921.47 million reported till November 2012, according to data published by Telecom regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), today.

The share of urban wireless subscribers has declined to 62.20% from 62.70% while share of rural subscribers has increased to 37.80% in December 2012. Teledensity in India has declined to 73.34 at the end of December from 75.55 reported till November.

Wireless subscriber base also dipped to 864.72 million till December end, a drop of 2.91% from 890.60 million in November. This decline is mainly due to large scale disconnections of inactive SIMs by some of the service providers, TRAI has said.

During the month, Uninor gained most subscribers with a net addition of 9.18 lakh backed by new customers in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh (East) and Uttar Pradesh (West). Quadrant and BSNL also marginally gained subscribers during the month.

Reliance Comminucations (RCom) lost most customers with a dip of 15.58 crore subscribers during December, followed by Vodafone (a drop of 32 lakh), Tata (29 lakh drop) Aircel (19 lakh loss), Bharti (decline of 17 lakh), Sistema (7.8 lakh drop), Videocon (3.7 lakh decline) and Idea Cellular (a drop of 1.9 lakh). Loop and MTNL also lost subscribers marginally during December, according to the TRAI data.

Till December 31, a total of 80.06 million subscribers opted for porting their mobile numbers.

Wireline subscriber base also declined to 30.79 million at the end of December 2012, from 30.87 million till November. The segment is dominated by state-owned BSNL and MTNL with a 79.57% share.

Broadband subscriber base increased to 14.98 million till December from 14.88 million at the end of November 2012, according to TRAI data. BSNL has a 66.1% share in the broadband category.