DoT plans pilot project to assess active mobile users

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) plans to undertake a pilot project to estimate the active mobile subscribers in the country.

The Telecom Commission, the highest policy making body of DoT, has asked the department to conduct an exercise to know the actual number of active mobile users against the number of active SIMs in the country. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), there are 670 million mobile users in the country. But according to experts, this is not the actual number of subscribers, since about 20 per cent of them hold multiple SIMs (subscriber identity module).

Experts estimate the actual number of people having mobile phones is about 550 million, rather than 670 million. This has happened because of an increasing trend, of a person having multiple SIM cards.

In a note, the Telecom Commission said that, “An exercise should be done on a pilot basis in a representative area to know the actual number of active (VLR based) users as against the number of active SIMs in that area.”

Currently, Trai takes subscriber figures as recorded in the Home Location Register of the telecom service providers. It gives the record for total number of SIMs sold and not active subscribers. The Visitor Location Register data gives the details of active customers at a given point of time.

The Telecom Commission also gave in-principle approval to take over the network operations control centre by DoT headquarters. The modalities will be worked out by an internal committee of the department with a representative from state-run telecom firm BSNL. The committee will look into staff issues and financial arrangements, including settlement of amounts collected by BSNL on behalf of the government.