Telephone subscriber base increased to 105 cr in Feb: Trai

The total telephone subscriber base in the country rose marginally in February to 105.18 crore on the back of growth in wireless users even as wireline base continues to decline.

The overall telephone subscriber base stood at 104.32 crore at the end of January, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said Tuesday.

"Total wireless subscriber base increased from 101.79 crore at the end of January-16 to 102.66 crore at the end of February-16, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of 0.85%," it said.

The wireline subscriber base though declined to 2.52 crore at the end of February from 2.53 crore in the previous month.

"BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU access service providers, held 72.54% of the wireline market share," Trai said.

The wireless tele-density in the country increased to 80.91% at the end of February from 80.30% in January.

"As on February 29, 2016, the private access service providers held 91.38% market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL had only a market share of 8.62%," Trai said.

Bharti Airtel added 29 lakh subscribers to take its base to 24.86 crore at the end of February whereas Vodafone added 20.34 lakh users and its base increased to 19.67 crore.

Idea Cellular added 14.63 lakh subscribers to increase its base to 17.46 crore and Reliance Communications added 6.99 lakh users to take its base to 10.19 crore.

Aircel added 6.10 lakh and Telenor added 2.50 lakh to take their respective bases to 8.66 crore and 5.16 crore.

State-run BSNL added 13.93 lakh subscribers to increase its base to 8.48 crore whereas MTNL added 10,696 users to take its base to 36.34 lakh.

Tata Teleservices lost 5.24 lakh subscribers and its base has shrunk to 6.02 crore. Sistema Shyam Teleservices and Videocon also lost 1.50 lakh and 22,299 users respectively.

The overall subscriber base of Sistema stood at 77.44 lakh and Videocon at 67.27 lakh.

The broadband subscribers increased from 14.01 crore at the end of January to 14.48 crore at the end of February with a monthly growth rate of 3.40%.

Top five service providers constituted 83.60% market share of the total broadband subscribers. "These service providers were Bharti Airtel (3.69 crore), Vodafone (2.64 crore), Idea Cellular (2.22 crore), BSNL (1.99 crore) and Reliance Communications (1.56 crore)," Trai said.

Trai said in February, a total of 51 lakh requests were received for mobile number portability (MNP). "With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 19.96 crore at the end of January-16 to 20.47 crore at the end of February-16, since the implementation of MNP," Trai added.