As expected, India has crossed a major milestone of 1 Billion Mobile subscriber base. In the month of October 2015, India added 6.83 million new mobile subscribers taking the total tally to 1003.49 million!
2015 has been a good year for Telecom Subscriber growth. A total of nearly 60 million mobile subscribers have been added since the start of year 2015, which means at an average 6 million subscribers have been added every month.
In comparison, whole of 2014 witnessed addition of just over 50 million subscribers. Check out the chart below that shows mobile subscriber additions since the start of the year 2014.
As far as wireline subscribers went, the fall continues. Over 100,000 wireline subscribers reduced bringing total tally to 25.85 million. Total Telecom subscriber base now stands at 1,029.34 million
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Active Subscriber Base
Active subscriber base ( mobile numbers that have been active for atleast once in October) witnessed a bugger jump. While total base increased by 6.83 million, active subscriber base increased by over 8.5 million.
With this addition, active subscriber base also crossed 900 million mark, 902.26 mln to be precise.
The active subscriber percentage was also highest in October at 89.91%
If you see, the active percentage has been steadily increasing over last few months. TRAI has done well to weed out non-active subscribers from the system.
TRAI has done well to weed out inactive numbers from the system. In 2012-13, the active percentage hover between 75 to 80 percent and now it nearly touched 90 percent.
Here is a graph depicting Total vs Active mobile subscriber base in India.
Mobile Subscriber Growth Highlights [Sept 2015]
– With an increase of 6.83 mln in Oct 2015, total mobile subscriber base has reached 1003.49 million. India had 996.66 million subscribers by end of September 2015.
– Urban India witnessed a monthly subscription increase of 0.05 percent or 0.29 mln subscribers, while rural mobile subscriber base increased by 1.56 percent or 6.54 mln.
– Urban India has a total of 578.11 million, while rural India has a total of 425.38 million mobile subscribers.
– Urban Teledensity decreased to 147.19 from 147.35 in Sept 15, while the rural tele-density increased to 48.83 from previous 48.11.
– Urban mobile subscriber share stands at 57.61% as compared 42.39% of rural subscribers.
– 5.11 million new Mobile portability requests were made in month of Oct 2015, taking the total tally of MNP requests since launch to 181.50 mln.
– Active Mobile Subscriber base increased from 893.73 million in Sept 2015 to 902.26 million in Oct 2015, taking the active percentage to 89.91 percent.
– Delhi remained the circle with highest teledensity of 239.13, while Bihar has the lowest at 54.42
– Total Broadband (> 512 Kbps) subscription numbers increased from 120.88 Million at the end of Sep- 15 to 125.22 million at the end of Oct-15 with monthly growth rate of 3.59%
– Out of 125.22 million broadband users, 108.48 million access internet through mobile devices or dongles.
Operator Wise Subscriber Additions [October2015]
In month of Oct 2015, Bharti Airtel added maximum numbers with 2.767 mln new mobile subscribers coming under their fold. For, the first time, Idea Cellular was not in the top 3. Vodafone added 1.3 mln, followed by Reliance at just over 1 million.
It is for the first time this year that Reliance has managed to cross 1 million subscriber base. October was a very bad month for Tata – they lost over 1.17 mln subscribers. BSNL has a decent month consecutively – they added over 727,000 subscribers in October.
Here is the graph showing Operator market share vs Monthly additions.
In last 12 months, Bharti Airtel has added maximum subscribers (25.586 mln), followed by Idea Cellular (23.5 mln) and Vodafone (15.968 mln). BSNL (-5.43 mln) and Tata (-3.1 mln) have performed the worst.
Here is graph showing performance of operators over past 12 months.
Top 8 Mobile Operators in Numbers
| Sr. No | Telecom Operator | Total Subscriber Count ( till Oct 2015) |
| 1 | Bharti Airtel | 237,978,949 |
| 2 | Vodafone | 189,476,816 |
| 3 | Idea Cellular | 167,288,744 |
| 4 | Reliance Communication | 111,418,843 |
| 5 | Aircel | 84,608,669 |
| 6 | BSNL | 80,425,300 |
| 7 | Tata | 60,849,605 |
| 8 | Telewings / Telenor | 48,717,346 |
[Trai Press Release]
[…] – With an increase of 1.43 mln in Dec 2015, total mobile subscriber base has reached 1010.89 million. India had 1003.49 million subscribers by end of October 2015. […]