Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released their Telecom Subscription addition stats for the month of April 2014 and for 7th month straight, India has seen positive number of additions. As per the report, India’s net mobile subscriber additions stood at 2.93 million, taking the total tally of subscribers to 907.44 Mln.
BSNL lost a chunk of subscribers in April, while Bharti Airtel added the maximum amount of subscribers. Reliance, Tata, Loop and MTNL were other providers who lost subscribers. This is also 3rd month in a row in which Reliance has shown negative numbers.
Here is how mobile subscriber growth has happened over past 18 months.
If you see the graph above one wonders how total subscribers are at the same level as in September 2012. The reason as you can see is that earlier non-active subscribers were also counted into the system, however, after TRAI’s directive of freeing up the numbers if inactive for more than 3 months have resulted in millions of numbers going out of the system.
The chart below will give you a better idea of active subscriber base in India. In Oct 2012, India had 703.92 million active subscribers, which has grown to 791.11 million in April. So, it is clear active subscriber base has grown to the tune of 90 million in last 18 months.
The active subscriber base has growth by nearly 10 percentage point since Oct 2012. It now stands at 87.18 percent of total subscribers.
Mobile Subscription Highlights [April 2014]
– With an increase of 2.93 mln in March 2014, total mobile subscriber base has reached to 907.44 million. India had 904.51 million subscribers by end of March 2014.
– Urban India witnessed a increase of 0.21 percent or 1.13 mln subscribers, while rural mobile subscriber base increased by 0.48 percent or 1.80 mln.
– Urban Teledensity increased to 139.93 from 139.86 in March 14, while the rural tele-density increased to 43.45 from previous 43.27.
– Urban mobile subscriber share stands at 58.83% as compared 41.11% of rural subscribers.
– 2.23 million new Mobile portability requests were made in month of April 2014, taking the total tally of MNP requests since launch to 119.24 mln.
– Active Mobile Subscriber base increased from 790.87 mln in March 14 to 791.11 mln in April 14, taking the active percentage to 87.18 percent.
– Total Broadband (> 512 Kbps) subscription numbers increased from 60.87 Million at the end of Mar-14 to 61.74 million at the end of Apr-14 with monthly growth rate of 1.45%
Operator Wise Subscriber Additions [April 2014]
BSNL was the biggest loser of subscribers in month of April. They lost close to 1.5 million subscribers followed by Reliance, who lost half a million subscribers.
On the other hand, Bharti Airtel added close to 1.2 mln subscribers increasing their market share further to 22.77 percent. Telewings (Telenor) have been doing quite well over past few months. They added close to million subscribers as well taking their market share to over 4 percent.
Aircel too added close to million subscribers followed by Idea (770k) and Vodafone (730k). Among smaller operators Videocon has been doing quite well and added around 320k subscribers in month of April
Top 8 Mobile Operators in Numbers [April 2014]
- Bharti Airtel – 206,581,649
- Vodafone – 167,292,258
- Idea – 136,558,231
- Reliance – 110,379,058
- BSNL – 93,187,378
- Tata – 62,892,114
- Aircel – 71,150,121
- Telewings / Uninor – 36,575,250
[TRAI April Report]
[…] – With an increase of 2.71 mln in May 2014, total mobile subscriber base has reached to 910.16 million. India had 907.44 million subscribers by end of April 2014. […]