Indian Mobile Subscription Stats: 3.8M New, 797M Active, 918.7M Total [July 14]
TRAI’s Telecom subscription numbers for month of July 2014 are out and it is 9th month in a row where mobile subscriber numbers have increased. This nearly opposite to the scenario we saw in late 2012 to 2013 when mobile subscriber numbers were falling on account of inactive numbers been thrown out of the system.
In July 2014, India added a total of 3.8 million new subscribers taking the total mobile subscriber tally to 918.72 million. The active subscriber percentage stood at 86.76 percent with a total of 797.06 million subscribers. Active subscribers are those who have made atleast made one phone call in past 3 months.
In July 2014, BSNL has continued it’s negative growth. It is the fifth straight month where they have lost subscribers. In past 5 months BSNL has lost over 8 million subscribers from their network. On the other hand, Vodafone was the biggest gainer adding nearly 1.368 million new subscriber to it’s tally.
Here is the how total new mobile subscribers have been added over past 2 years.
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Active Subscriber Base Increase
Although total subscribers added in July are 3.8 million, active subscriber base witnessed a rise of only 1.48 million. So, more subscribers went out the system then were actually added. The total active base currently stands at 797.06 million.
The active base percentage stands at 86.76 down from 86.96 in previous month.
Mobile Subscription Highlights [July 2014]
– With an increase of 3.80 mln in July 2014, total mobile subscriber base has reached to 918.72 million. India had 914.92 million subscribers by end of June 2014.
– Urban India witnessed a monthly increase of 0.53 percent or 2.87 mln subscribers, while rural mobile subscriber base increased by 0.25 percent or 0.93 mln.
– Urban Teledensity increased to 140.96 from 140.44 in June 14, while the rural tele-density increased to 43.90 from previous 43.82.
– Urban mobile subscriber share stands at 58.82% as compared 41.18% of rural subscribers.
– 2.86 million new Mobile portability requests were made in month of July 2014, taking the total tally of MNP requests since launch to 126.72 mln.
– Active Mobile Subscriber base increased from 795.58 mln in June 14 to 797.06 mln in July 14, taking the active percentage to 86.76 percent.
– Total Broadband (> 512 Kbps) subscription numbers increased from 68.83 million at the end of Jun 14 to 70.81 million at the end of July 14 with monthly growth rate of 2.87%
Operator Wise Subscriber Additions [July 2014]
BSNL was once again biggest loser with nearly 1.4 million subscribers going out of their network. The fall can be attributed partially to mobile number portability as well as due to non-active subscribers. Nearly one-thirds of BSNL subscribers are non-active.
Loop mobile lost a big chunk of their subscribers in month of July. The lost over 30 percent of their subscriber base equivalent to nearly 875k. Among top 5 operators, Vodafone (1.368M) and Idea (1.105M) added over 1 million subscribers. Aircel and Uninor have continued their impressive run in July as well, adding 0.917 million and 0.854 million respectively.
Check out performance of top 7 Indian operators over past 6 months.
Top 8 Mobile Operators in Numbers [July 2014]
| # | Operator | Total Subscriber Count |
| 1 | Bharti Airtel | 209,759,854 |
| 2 | Vodafone | 171,266,102 |
| 3 | Idea | 140,116,769 |
| 4 | Reliance | 109,353,732 |
| 5 | BSNL | 88,075,870 |
| 6 | Tata | 63,483,253 |
| 7 | Aircel | 73,989,247 |
| 8 | Telewings / Uninor | 40,167,372 |
[TRAI report July 2014]
