TRAI has released their June Telecom subscription numbers and according to it, India added 4.77 million new wireless subscribers taking the total tally to 914.92 million. June 2014 becomes 8th month in a row that has witnessed positive growth. In month of May 2014, 2.71 mln new subscribers were added.
BSNL yet again lost a large chunk of their subscribers – 2.14 million to be precise. Even in month of May they were biggest losers with loss of over 1.5 mln subscribers.
Here is a chart showing subscriber additions over last 20 months.
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Active Subscriber Base Increase
Active mobile subscriber base increased by over 5 million to reach 795.58 million, which make nearly 87 percent of Indian mobile subscribers active. Interestingly, previous 2 months had seen a marginal fall in active subscriber base count.
Over past 18 months active subscribers have increased by 5 percentage points. TRAI has done a great job of weeding out non-active subscribers from the system.
Mobile Subscription Highlights [May 2014]
– With an increase of 4.77 mln in May 2014, total mobile subscriber base has reached to 914.92 million. India had 910.16 million subscribers by end of May 2014.
– Urban India witnessed a monthly increase of 0.68 percent or 3.63 mln subscribers, while rural mobile subscriber base increased by 0.30 percent or 1.14 mln.
– Urban Teledensity increased to 140.44 from 139.72 in May 14, while the rural tele-density increased to 43.82 from previous 43.72.
– Urban mobile subscriber share stands at 58.76% as compared 41.24% of rural subscribers.
– 2.39 million new Mobile portability requests were made in month of June 2014, taking the total tally of MNP requests since launch to 123.87 mln.
– Active Mobile Subscriber base increased from 790.52 mln in April 14 to 795.58 mln in June 14, taking the active percentage to 86.96 percent.
–Â Total Broadband (> 512 Kbps) subscription numbers increased from 65.33Million at the end of May 14 to 68.83 million at the end of June 14 with monthly growth rate of 5.35%.
Operator Wise Subscriber Additions [June 2014]
BSNL lost a huge chunk of subscribers in June 2014, 2.14 million to be precise. This is the 3rd straight month where BSNL has seen a big drop in their subscriber base. Due to this fall their market share has now gone below 10 percent. Tata, MTL and Loop were the other operators who lost subscribers.
On the other hand Telewings (Uninor) continued their stellar run. They added maximum number (1.43 mln) of subscribers, only after Videocon who added 1.62 million new subscribers to their kitty. Idea Cellular has been consistent in their subscriber additions (1.29 mln). Bharti Airtel added shade over 1 million new subscribers.
Top 8 Mobile Operators in Numbers [June 2014]
| # | Operator | Subscriber Number |
| 1 | Bharti Airtel | 209,249,262 |
| 2 | Vodafone | 169,897,599 |
| 3 | Idea | 139,010,952 |
| 4 | Reliance | 10,8849,746 |
| 5 | BSNL | 89,473,372 |
| 6 | Tata | 62,869,512 |
| 7 | Aircel | 73,071,532 |
| 8 | Telewings / Uninor | 39,313,499 |
[TRAI Report for June 2014]
