Telecom subscribers' base up marginally at 116.8 crore in June

Telecom subscribers base in India reached 116.8 crore at the end of June, with Reliance Jio adding the highest number of new customers to its mobile network, according to a Trai report released today.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,153.51 million (115.35 crore) at the end of May 2018 to 1,168.89 million (116.88 crore) at the end of June 2018, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 1.33 per cent," Trai's subscriber report for the month of June said.

The mobile subscriber base in the country increased to 114.65 crore with net addition of 1.55 crore in the reported month.

Reliance Jio led the growth in mobile segment by adding over 97 lakh new connections during the month. It was followed by Idea Cellular which added over 63 lakh new connections. Vodafone saw an addition of over 2.75 lakh new mobile connections, BSNL 2.44 lakh and Airtel 10,689.

Tata Teleservices, which is in process of merging mobile services business with Airtel, lost over 1 million mobile service customers. Reliance Communications lost 1.08 lakh mobile customers and state-run MTNL 9,615.

According to the report by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), the landline segment continued to decline.

"Wireline subscribers further declined from 22.51 million (2.25 crore) at the end of May 2018 to 22.40 million (2.24 crore) at the end of June 2018," the report said.

The broadband subscribers increased to 44.71 crore in June from 43.2 crore in May with mobile segment accounting for around 96 per cent of the total base.

"Top five service providers constituted 97.67 per cent market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of June 2018. These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (215.26 million or 21.52 crore ), Bharti Airtel (95.31 million or 9.53 crore), Vodafone (62.86 million or 6.28 crore), Idea Cellular (42.95 million 4.29 crore) and BSNL (20.34 million 2.03 crore)," the report said.

The overall tele-density in India reached 89.72 in June. The urban tele-density reached 158.16 and rural tele-density increased marginally to 57.99 at the end of June.