Tele subscriber growth drops 26% in April

The Indian telecom industry has registered a 25.96 per cent lower subscriber addition in April this year as operators withdrew schemes that were rolled out during the last quarter of 2008-09.

The industry has added a total of 11.75 million subscribers (both wired and wireless) in April this year, taking the total number of connections to 441.47 million. However, this is lower by 4.42 million, compared with 15.87 million users added in March 2009, according to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

On the mobile front, the total number of subscribers crossed the 400 million-mark during the reporting month on the back of an addition of 11.90 million wireless subscribers. This is lower by 23.91 per cent as against the 15.64 million wireless users added by GSM, CDMA and WLL (fixed) operators in March 2009. The number of wired users added slid during the reporting month to 37.81 million (against 37.96 million in March).

However, the overall tele-density — calculated on the basis of the number of people using phones for a population of 100 — rose to 37.94 per cent from 36.98 per cent. The total number of broadband subscribers (with over 256 kpbs download speed) grew to 6.28 million from 6.22 million in March. “Telecos were hard-selling connections during the first three months of the calendar year. This was done to increase the subscriber numbers and revenues, as these months (January- March) were also the last quarter of the previous financial year,” said an analyst.