Telephone subscriber base rises to 98 cr in Jan: Trai

The total telephone subscriber base in the country rose marginally to 97.92 crore in January, sectoral regulator Trai said today.

The subscriber base stood at 97.09 crore at the end of December 2014.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 970.97 million at the end of December 2014 to 979.21 million at the end of January 2015, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.85%," Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said.

The overall tele-density in the country increased to 78.16% from 77.58% at the end of December.

The wireless subscriber base increased by 0.89% to reach 95.23 crore at the end of January from 94.39 crore in December whereas wireline base declined to 2.68 crore from 2.70 crore.

"As on January 31, 2015, the private access service providers held 91.22% market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSUs access service providers, held only 8.78% market share," Trai said.

During the month of January, Bharti Airtel added 28.35 lakh new users to take its base to 22 crore whereas Vodafone India added 18.18 lakh subscribers and its base has increased to 18.04 crore.

Idea Cellular added 23.49 lakh subscribers to take its base to 15.28 crore while Reliance Communications added 3.14 lakh subscribers and its base has increased to 10.66 crore.

Aircel added 9.42 lakh subscribers and its base has increased to 7.96 crore whereas Uninor added 8.57 lakh subscribers to take its base to 4.44 crore.

Tata Teleservices added 3 lakh subscribers and its base at the end of January stood at 6.64 crore.

Sistema Shyam Teleservices, however, lost 87,201 subscribers and its overall base has been reduced to 88.92 lakh at the end of January.

Videocon Telecom added 1.73 lakh subscribers and its base stood at 66.25 lakh during the reported period.

State-run BSNL lost 12.36 lakh subscribers which led its base to decline to 8.01 crore while MTNL added 23368 subscribers and its base increased to 34.74 lakh.

In January, a total of 35.6 lakh subscribers submitted their requests for mobile number portability. With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 14.29 crore at the end of December to 14.65 crore at the end of January.

The number of broadband subscribers increased from 8.57 crore at the end of December to 9.44 crore at the end of January with monthly growth rate of 10.21%.