Telecom user base grows marginally to 91 cr in Aug

The total number of telecom subscribers rose marginally to 90.61 crore at end of August this year, sectoral regulator Trai said today.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 904.46 million at the end of July, 2013 to 906.18 million at the end of August 2013, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.19%," Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said in a statement.

The total number of wireless subscribers increased from 87.48 crore in July to 87.67 crore in August, a monthly growth of 0.21%.

"The share of urban wireless subscribers has declined from 60.10% to 59.98% whereas share of rural wireless subscribers has increased from 39.90% to 40.02%," Trai said.

The overall wireless teledensity in the country is 71.21 against 71.13 in the previous month.

At end of August, private operators hold 88.38% of the wireless market share (based on subscriber base) whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU operators held only 11.62% market share, it said.

Aircel added 8.76 lakh users in August to take its subscriber base to 6.26 crore, followed by Bharti Airtel which added 8.33 lakh new users during the period and its subscriber base stands at 19.22 crore at the end of August.

Idea Cellular added 7.52 lakh subscribers and its base stands at 12.60 crore whereas dual technology operator Reliance Communications added 5.10 lakh users to take its base to 12.67 crore.

Videocon and Loop added 1.58 lakh and 65,057 new users respectively during August.

Country's second largest operator Vodafone lost 85,811 subscribers in the reported period and its base has decreased to 15.43 crore at the end of August.

However, Uninor lost 5.05 lakh users, the maximum for the month, and the company's base has shrunk to 3.22 crore.

State-run BSNL and MTNL too lost 1.31 lakh and 2.92 lakh users respectively. Their subscriber base stand at 9.79 crore and 39.73 lakh respectively.

Tata Teleservices and Sistema Shyam Teleservices too lost 3.73 lakh and 15,515 users respectively during the month.

The total number of subscribers who have submitted their request for mobile number portability (MNP) stands at 23.7 lakh at end of August.

Trai said the total number of MNP requests have reached over 10 crore by the end of August.

"As per the data reported by the service providers, by the end of August 2013 about 100.20 million subscribers have submitted their requests to different service providers for porting their mobile number," it said.

The wireline subscriber base declined from 2.95 crore at July-end to 2.94 crore at the end of August.

"Total broadband subscriber base has increased from 15.24 million at the end of July 2013 to 15.28 million at the end of August 2013, there by showing a monthly growth of 0.26%," it said.

Yearly growth in broadband subscribers is 3.10% during the last one year (August 2012 to August 2013).

As on August 31, 2013, there are 162 internet service providers (ISPs) which are providing broadband services in the country.