India Mobile Subscriber base reaches 929.4 Mln, MNP requests cross 50 mln [May’12]

By Arun Prabhudesai Last updated May 30, 2014

Although, the growth in mobile subscriber base has slowed down considerably over past few months, May 2012 saw a healthy growth after dismal April figures. According to the TRAI report for May 2012, India added 8.35 million new subscribers taking the overall mobile subscriber base in India to 929.37 million. Here is a look at monthly subscriber additions since March 2011.

Indian Telecom Subscription Highlights Data May 2012

– 8.35 mln new subscribers added taking total tally to 929.37 mln

– Rural India (5.81 mln) added more than double the subscribers as compared to Urban India (2.53 mln). Rural monthly growth rate was 1.78% as compared to 0.43% of Urban India.

– Urban Teledensity stands at 162.57 as compared to rural density of 39.35

– Rural mobile subscriber share was 64.24%

– 4.27 million new Mobile portability requests were made in month of May taking the total tally of MNP requests since launch to 50.16 mln

– Out of total 929.37 million, 68.33 mln were active mobile subscribers in month of May.

– 3.6 lakh new Broadband subscribers were added in month of May taking total tally to 1.43 crore.

– Delhi (239.91) has 4 times the teledensity as compared to the National average (79.28). Lowest teledensity was registered in Assam (47.7)

– India has a total telecom subscriber base (wireless+wireline) of 960.90 mln.

Operator wise Mobile Subscriber additions [May 12]

Bharti Airtel added 2 million new subscribers to its kitty accounting for 24% of all the new additions in May. Their total base now stands at 185 million. Idea added 17.6 million taking their tally to 116 million by end of May. After dismal last few months, where Tata was continuously loosing subscribers, they managed to add 307k subscriber. Tata’s total subscriber base now stands at 81.5 million. The 2 PSU operators BSNL and MTNL were the only operators who witnessed a negative growth in May 2012.

Telecom Operator wise Market Share [May 2012]

While Bharti is way ahead with close 20% market share in India, Reliance (16.58%) and Vodafone (16.41) are having a close battle. Reliance currently has 154 million subscribers as compared to 152.5 million of Vodafone. Uninor, who is one of the late entrants in Indian Telecom market now has over 45 million subscribers and accounts for close to 5 percent of Indian mobile market share.