Indian Telecom Growth Story: From 10M to 900M Subscribers In 10Yrs

[Updated: August 2014]

We had written this article in 2007 and it was high time we updated it with recent numbers for benefit of our readers. Even today in 2014, India’s telecommunication is the fastest growing telecom market in world, only behind China. As per July 2014 TRAI report, India has close to 920 million total mobile subscribers. Just 6 years back that number was 250 million, whereas 10 years back in 2004 the same number was 48.3 million. That is a as huge a jump as it could.

With growth in numbers, our Telecom Industry has also evolved. We now have 4G too. Mobile internet speeds are increasing, and more and more people are now coming on the Internet thanks to growth in Smartphones.

We present to you the chart that shows this growth from 3.1 million mobile users to 920 million in 2014. Be amazed..

You can see that since 2012, the growth seems to have been stagnated, but the real reason is that TRAI has taken steps to weed out inactive numbers from the system. Many mobile operators lost significant amount of numbers. So while new subscribers were being added, nearly equal numbers went out of the system and hence the stagnation. Earlier the active subscriber ratio was nearly 60% which has now reached to nearly 85 percent.

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Previously (written in 2007)

Yes, that’s true. Indian telecommunication Industry is one of the fastest growing telecom market in the world. The mobile sector has grown from around 10 million subscribers in 2002 to reach 150 million by early 2007 registering an average growth of over 90% yoy. The two major reasons that have fuelled this growth are low tariffs coupled with falling handset prices.

Surprisingly, CDMA market has increased it market share upto 30% thanks to Reliance Communication. However, across the globe, CDMA has been loosing out numbers to popular GSM technology, contrary to the scenario in India.

The other reason that has tremendously helped the telecom Industry is the regulatory changes and reforms that have been pushed for last 10 years by successive Indian governments. According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) the rate of market expansion would increase with further regulatory and structural reforms.

Even though the fixed line market share has been dropping consistently, the overall (fixed and mobile) subscribers has risen to more than 200 million by first quarter of 2007. The telecom reforms have allowed the foreign telecommunication companies to enter Indian market which has still got huge potential. International telecom companies like Vodafone have made entry into Indian market in a big way.

Currently the Indian Telecommunication market is valued at around $100 billion (Rupees 400,000 crore). Two telecom players dominate this market – Bharti Airtel with 27% market share and Reliance Communication with 20% along with other players like BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) and AT&T.

One segment of the market that has been puzzling is broadband Internet. Despite the manner in which the countrys Internet market has been booming, India’s move into high-speed broadband Internet access has been distinctly slow. And, while there appears to be considerable enthusiasm amongst the population for the Internet itself, this has not been reflected in broadband subscription numbers. In 2006 India witnessed a good surge in broadband users with the total subscriber base in the country expanding by almost 200% to just over 2 million by years end. Despite this surge, broadband penetration in India still remains around only 0.2%; broadband services still account for only 25% of the total Internet subscriber base, still in itself comparatively low.

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) is has very aggressive plans to increase the pace of growth, targeting 250 million telephone subscribers by end-2007 and 500 million by 2010. Most of the expansion in subscribers is set to occur in rural India. India’s rural telephone density has been languishing at around 1.9%;

So, if 70% of total population is rural, the scope for growth in this Industry is unprecedented.

GSM and CDMA subscription numbers:

Year	GSM Subscribers (millions)	GSM Annual growth	CDMA Subscribers (millions)	CDMA Annual growth
2000	3.1	94%	–	–
2001	5.05	76%	–	–
2002	10.5	91%	0.8	–
2003	22.0	110%	6.4	700%
2004	37.4	70%	10.9	70%
2005	58.5	57%	19.1	75%
2006	105.4	80%	44.2	131%
2007	180.0	71%	85.0	92%