Telephone user base rises to 94.29 cr in Apr-June qtr: TRAI

The telephone subscriber base in the country rose 1.07 per cent in April-June quarter to reach 94.29 crore at the end of June 2014, sectoral regulator TRAI said today.
The subscriber base in the preceding quarter (Jan-March) stood at 93.30 crore, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said in its Indian telecom services performance indicators report for April-June quarter of 2014.
"The overall tele-density in India increased from 75.23 as on March 31, 2014 to 75.80 as on June 30, 2014," TRAI said.
TRAI said with a net addition of 1.04 crore subscribers during the quarter, total wireless(GSM+CDMA) subscriber base increased from 90.45 crore at the end of March, 2014 to 91.49 crore at the end of June 2014, registering a growth rate of 1.15 per cent over the previous quarter.

The wireline subscriber base, however, further declined from 2.85 crore at the end of March to 2.80 crore at the end of June.
"Total number of Internet subscribers has increased from 251.59 million at the end of Mar-14 to 259.14 million at the end of Jun-14, there has been a quarterly growth of 3.00 per cent," the regulator said.

Monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) for GSM-based services increased to Rs 119 for the reported quarter as compared to Rs 113 in the preceding period, whereas ARPU of CDMA-based services increased to Rs 112 from Rs 105.
"Gross revenue (GR) and adjusted gross revenue (AGR) of telecom service sector for the QE Jun-14 has been Rs 62,919 crore and Rs 43,852 crore respectively," TRAI said.

The license fee increased from Rs 3,286 crore for the quarter ending March 2014 to Rs 3,503 crore for the quarter ending June 2014, TRAI said.