TRAI has published their monthly telecom subscription report for December 2013. According to it, India added 5.16 million new subscribers in the last month of 2013 taking the total tally of mobile subscribers in India to 886.30.
It is interesting to note that in last few months, rural subscribers additions have been quite high compared to urban additions. However, in month of December, urban India added 2.83 million compared to 2.33 million in the rural areas.
2013 has turned out to be much better year for new mobile subscriber addition compared to 2012. Total tally of mobile subscribers increased from 864.72 million in Dec 2012 to 886.3 million in Dec 2013.
2013 also witnessed bulk of inactive subscriber go out of the system thereby increasing the active subscriber percentage to a large extent. By end of Dec 2012, India had a total of 701.6 million active subscribers; the same count reached 762.4 million in Dec 2013.
So, in terms of active subscriber base, the number increased by 60.8 million in whole of 2013!
Mobile Subscription Highlights [December 2013]
– With an increase of 5.16 million in Dec 2013, total mobile subscriber base has reached to 886.30 million. India had 881.13 million subscribers by end of November 2013.
– Urban India witnessed a increase of 0.54 percent or 2.83 mln subscribers, while rural mobile subscriber base increased by 0.65 percent or 2.33 mln.
– Urban Teledensity increased to 138.94 from 138.42 in November, while the rural tele-density increased to 41.95 from previous 41.71.
– Urban mobile subscriber share stands at 59.42% as compared 40.58% of rural subscribers.
– 2.50 million new Mobile portability requests were made in month of Dec 2013, taking the total tally of MNP requests since launch to 109.37 mln.
– Active Mobile Subscriber base increased from 753.47 mln in Nov 2013 to 762.40 mln in Dec 2013 taking the active percentage to 86.02 percent.
–Â Total Broadband (> 512 Kbps) subscription reached 55.20 million at the end of December 2013. Out of which, wired broadband subscription is 14.54 million and wireless broadband subscription is 40.66 million.
– Wireline Subscriber base fell to 28.89 mln in Dec 2013 as compared to previously 29.01 million.
– India’s total telecom subscriber base (wireless+wireline) has increased to 915.19 mln in Dec 2013, compared to 910.14 mln in Nov 2013.
Operator Wise Market Share [December 2013]
BSNL saw a significant fall in mobile subscribers in month of December 2013. Over 2 million subscribers went out from BSNL network, which bought down their market share from 11.16% in November 2013 to 10.86% in December. Tata and Loop were other companies that witnessed marginal fall in subscriber numbers.
On the hand, Vodafone added maximum (2.374 mln)Â number of subscribers, thereby increasing their market share from 17.94% in Nov to 18.10% in December 2013. Bharti Airtel (1.808 mln) and Aircel (1.628 mln) rounded the top 3 operators in terms of new subscriber additions.
Mobile Subscriber Numbers of Top 8 Mobile Operators [December 2013]
- Bharti Airtel – 198,406,537
- Vodafone – 160,407,965
- Idea – 128,685,043
- Reliance – 117,242,552
- BSNL – 96,292,218
- Tata –  63,267,497
- Aircel – 66,911,830
- Unitech – 32,780,881
[TRAI Dec 2013 report]
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