Telecom user base rises to 92 cr in Jan: Trai

The total number of telecom subscribers in the country rose marginally to 92.20 crore in January, on the back of increase in rural subscribers, sectoral regulator Trai said today.

The overall user base stood at 91.51 crore at the end of December 2013, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 915.19 million at the end of December, 2013 to 922.04 million at the end of January, 2014, thereby showing a monthly growth of 0.75%," Trai said.

The share of urban subscribers declined from 60.03% to 59.86%, whereas the share of rural subscribers increased from 39.97% to 40.14% in January.

The regulator said subscription in urban areas increased to 55.19 crore from 54.94 crore in December, whereas rural subscription increased to 37 crore from 36.57 crore in the same period.

"The monthly growth rate of urban and rural subscription is 0.47% and 1.17% respectively," it said.

Trai said the wireless base increased to 89.33 crore at the end of January from 88.63 crore in December.

Market leader Bharti Airtel added the maximum 24.33 lakh new users during the month to take its user base to 20.08 crore at the end of January, followed by second biggest operator Vodafone, which added 17.80 lakh subscribers to take its base to 16.21 crore during the reported period.

Airtel and Vodafone enjoy 22.48% and 18.16% market share respectively.

Idea Cellular added 15.32 lakh users and its subscriber base at the end of January stood at 13.02 crore.

Reliance Communications added 4.06 lakh users to take its base to 11.76 crore in the reported period.

Aircel and Uninor added 15.32 lakh and 11.35 lakh new users respectively. Videocon also added 2.63 lakh subscribers.

State-run BSNL and MTNL, however, lost 15.75 lakh and 96,309 users respectively.

"Private operators hold 89.01% of the wireless subscriber market share where as BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU operators hold only 10.99% market share," Trai said.

The wireline subscriber base declined from 2.88 crore at the end of December, to 2.87 crore at the end of January.

Trai said that as per the reports received from 144 broadband service providers, there were 5.69 crore broadband subscribers in the country at the end of January.

"Top five broadband service providers constitute 82.57% market share of total broadband subscribers. They are BSNL (16.54 million), Bharti (11.49 million), Reliance (7.07 million), Idea (6.26 million) and Vodafone (5.63 million)," Trai added.