Indian Mobile Subscriber Stats: 910.16M Total, 790.52M Active, 121.47M MNP Requests [May 2014]

TRAI released their telecom subscription report for month of May 2014, and according to it India had a total of 910.16 million mobile subscribers a rise of 0.30 percent over previous month. This is a rise of about 40 million subscribers in last one year (In May 2013, India had 870.2 mln subs).

Reliance and BSNL were once again big losers this time around with Reliance losing over 2 million and BSNL losing over 1.57 mln.

Here is look at mobile subscription growth over last 8 months.

Active Subscriber Base Witnessed Marginal Fall

The active mobile subscriber base (Subscribers who used the mobile atleast once in last 3 months) has fallen for second month in a row even though the total number has increased. This is quite surprising because this number is directly proportional to number of new subscribers added.

If active subscriber base falls that means real users are going out of the system, which seems quite perplexing given the subscription growth numbers.

Check out total vs active subscriber base over last 18 months

Mobile Subscription Highlights [May 2014]

– 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.

– Urban India witnessed a increase of 0.01 percent or 0.07 mln subscribers, while rural mobile subscriber base increased by 0.71 percent or 2.64 mln.

– Urban Teledensity decreased to 139.72 from 139.93 in April 14, while the rural tele-density increased to 43.72 from previous 43.45.

– Urban mobile subscriber share stands at 58.66% as compared 41.34% of rural subscribers.

– 2.23 million new Mobile portability requests were made in month of May 2014, taking the total tally of MNP requests since launch to 121.47 mln.

– Active Mobile Subscriber base decreased from 791.11 mln in April 14 to 790.52 mln in May 14, taking the active percentage to 86.86 percent.

–  Total Broadband (> 512 Kbps) subscription numbers increased from 61.74 Million at the end of April 14 to 65.33 million at the end of May 14 with monthly growth rate of 5.28%.

Operator Wise Subscriber Additions [May 2014]

Like last month, Reliance and BSNL both lost subscribers heavily. Reliance lost over 2 million subscribers in May to add to about half a million in April. BSNL lost over 1.5 million nearly the same as they did in April.

On the other side, Bharti Airtel remained the operator with maximum number of additions in month of May at 1.65 million. Surprisingly Telewings (erstwhile Uninor) has added second higher new subscribers to their at at 1.3 million. Even last month they had added close to 1 million, so they are doing quite well.

Idea (1.16 mln), Vodafone (0.98 mln), Aircel (0.94 mln) were other operators who made good number of new subscriber additions.

Top 8 Mobile Operators in Numbers [May 2014]

#	Operator	Subscriber Number
1	Bharti Airtel	208,236,696
2	Vodafone	168,274,639
3	Idea	137,720,180
4	Reliance	108,335,921
5	BSNL	91,614,103
6	Tata	62,973,653
7	Aircel	72,092,331
8	Telewings / Uninor	37,881,202

[TRAI Report]