Telecom subscriber base in India crosses 1.2-billion mark

The telecom subscriber base crossed 1.2 billion mark in May, according to sectoral regulator Trai.

While the growth was led by 6.23 million net subscriber additions in the mobile services segment, it was marginally impacted by decline of 0.14 million landline subscribers.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,198.89 million at the end of April 2017 to 1,204.98 million at the end of May 2017, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.51 per cent," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said in a report today.

Total wireless subscribers increased by 0.53 per cent to 1,180.82 million at the end of May from 1,174.60 million at the end of April.

Reliance Jio continued to lead the growth momentum with net addition of 4.7 million new customers accounting for about 75 per cent of overall net subscriber addition in the mobile services segment.

Jio was followed by Bharti Airtel which added 2.09 million new customers, state-run BSNL (1.35 million), Vodafone (1.13 million) and Idea Cellular (0.19 million).

Aircel and Reliance Communications added 0.17 million net subscribers each.

Loss of subscriber by Tata Teleservices (2.1 million), Telenor (1.32 million), Sistema Shyam (0.25 million) and MTNL (2,136) mitigated growth in the mobile services segment.

Out of the total wireless subscribers (1,180.82 million), 1,019.55 million wireless subscribers were found active in May.

The wireline or landline subscribers base declined to 24.16 million at the end of May, from 24.30 million at the end of April.

There were marginal net additions in landline connections by private players but it failed to arrest loss in wireline subscriber base due to huge decline in subscriber base of market leader BSNL.

BSNL lost 0.13 million landline customers despite multiple offers to push its wireline business. MTNL lost 9,883 fixed line customers, RCom - 2,854 and Tata Teleservices - 2,670 customers.

The broadband subscriber base increased by 2.6 per cent on monthly basis to 291.61 million at the end of May from 284.23 Million at the end of April.

"Top five service providers constituted 88.23 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of May 2017. These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocom Ltd (117.34 million), Bharti Airtel (53.30 million), Vodafone (40.43 million), Idea Cellular (24.63 million) and BSNL (21.59 million)," the report said.

The fixed line broadband services declined by 0.14 per cent on monthly basis to 18.23 million at the end of May from 18.25 million at the end of April.

The top five wired broadband service providers in May were BSNL (9.80 million), Bharti Airtel (2.09 million), Atria Convergence Technologies (1.20 million), MTNL (0.99 million) and YOU Broadband (0.64 million), the report said.

During the month of May, a total of 5.37 million requests were received for mobile number portability (MNP).

"With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 277.72 million at the end of April 2017 to 283.09 million at the end of May 2017, since the implementation of MNP," the report said.