Indian telecom subscriber base has touched 1 Billion subscribers out of which 973.4 million are mobile subscribers, whereas 26.4 million are landline users according to TRAI report for month of April 2105.
The total telecom subscriber base has touched 999.71 million at end of April 2015 (So, sometimes in early May, India crossed 1 Billion subscriber mark).
In April, India added 3.45 million new mobile subscribers take the total tally of mobile subscribers to 973.35 million. This is far lesser than what India added in March 2015. As has been happening for past few years, the wireline subscribers fell by 0.23 million in month of April reducing the total tally to 26.36 million.
While rural subscriber additions have been much higher in preceding months – April 2015 witnessed far more urban subscribers additions (3.07M) compared to rural (0.39M).
Here is how Indian mobile subscriber base has grown in last 18 months.
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Active Subscriber Base
While the total additions were pegged at 3.45 million, their was significant bump in active subscriber base (the number of connections that have been active atleast once in a particular month).
The active subscriber base increased by over 7.3 million taking the total active subscriber percentage to 89.37. The difference between total and active subscriber base was 103.5 million – This figure was over 230 million in 2012. TRAI has done well to weed out inactive subscribers from the system.
Here is the chart that shows Total Vs Active subscriber base since Sept 2013.
Mobile Subscriber Growth Highlights [April 2015]
– With an increase of 3.45 mln in April 2015, total mobile subscriber base has reached to 973.35 million. India had 969.89 million subscribers by end of March 2015.
– Urban India witnessed a monthly subscription increase of 0.55% percent or 3.07 mln subscribers, while rural mobile subscriber base increased slightly by 0.09 percent or 0.39 mln.
– Urban India has a total of 558.78 million, while rural India has a total of 414.57 million mobile subscribers.
– Urban Teledensity increased to 143.64 from 143.08 in March 15, while the rural tele-density increased to 47.79 from previous 47.78.
– Urban mobile subscriber share stands at 57.41% as compared 42.59% of rural subscribers.
– 3.17 million new Mobile portability requests were made in month of April 2015, taking the total tally of MNP requests since launch to 157.01 mln.
– Active Mobile Subscriber base increased from 862.63 mln in March 2015 to 869.93 million in April 2015, taking the active percentage to 89.37 percent.
– Total Broadband (> 512 Kbps) subscription numbers increased from from 99.20 Million at the end of Mar-15 to 100.76 million at the end of Apr-15 with monthly growth rate of 1.88%
Operator Wise Subscriber Additions [April 2015]
As has been the case over past few months – Airtel and Idea have been increasing their subscriber base at much faster pace than others. However, smaller operators Uninor and Aircel have also been doing quite well beating likes of Reliance and Tata in subscriber addition.
April 2015 was not a good month for Tata Teleservices – they lost over 3.5 million subscribers from their kitty. On the other hand Airtel added 2.23 mln subscribers followed by Idea (1.4m) and Uninor (1.17m).
Here is the chart for operator wise subscriber additions for month of April 2015
In last 12 months, Idea Cellular has performed the best adding over 20.7 million subscribers, while BSNL has fared the worst losing over 13.5 million subscribers. You can check out the graph below that shows operator wise subscriber additions in last 12 months.
Top 8 Mobile Operators in Numbers
| # | Operator | Total Subscriber Count (till Dec 2014) |
| 1 | Bharti Airtel | 228,252,253 |
| 2 | Vodafone | 184,562,590 |
| 3 | Idea | 159,200,067 |
| 4 | Reliance | 109,802,978 |
| 5 | BSNL | 77,810,460 |
| 6 | Aircel | 82,015,141 |
| 7 | Â Tata | 62,567,964 |
| 8 | Telewings / Uninor | 46,784,614 |
[Trai April 2015 Report]
