January 2015 was yet another positive month for mobile subscriber growth in India – It registered highest additions in last 12 months at 8.37 million taking the total mobile subscriber base to 952.34 million.
The growth was led by rural subscriber additions, which accounted for over 5.5 million, twice as compared to urban additions. We are increasingly seeing the trend where rural areas are adding far more subscribers than urban areas. especially when it comes to new subscriber additions.
BSNL has continued it’s bad run, and for fifth month in a row, they have lost chunk of their subscribers, either through MNP port-outs or inactive subscribers. Jan 2015 saw them losing over 1.2 mln!
In last 12 months, India has seen addition of roughly 50 million new subscribers!
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Active Subscriber Base
The percentage of active mobile subscribers has now risen to 88.45 – Out of 952.34 million total subscribers, about 842 million are active subscribers (they have used their mobiles at least once in a month).
While total mobile subscriber additions for month of Jan were 8.37 million, active subscriber base increased by 9.37 million!
Here is a chart showing Total Vs Active Subscriber Growth.
Mobile Subscription Highlights [Jan 2015]
– With an increase of 8.37 mln in Jan 2015, total mobile subscriber base has reached to 952.34 million. India had 943.97 million subscribers by end of Dec 2014.
– Urban India witnessed a monthly decrease of 0.51 percent or 2.82 mln subscribers, while rural mobile subscriber base increased by 1.41 percent or 5.56 mln.
– Urban India has a total of 553.45 million, while rural India has a total of 398.89 million mobile subscribers.
– Urban Teledensity increased to 142.96 from 142.46 in Dec 14, while the rural tele-density increased to 46.08 from previous 45.47.
– Urban mobile subscriber share stands at 58.11% as compared 41.89% of rural subscribers.
– 3.56 million new Mobile portability requests were made in month of Jan 2015, taking the total tally of MNP requests since launch to 146.54 mln.
– Active Mobile Subscriber base increased from 833.02 mln in Dec 14 to 842.39 mln in Jan 2015, taking the active percentage to 88.45 percent.
– Total Broadband (> 512 Kbps) subscription numbers increased from 85.74 Million at the end of December, 2014 to 94.49 million at the end of Jan 2015 with monthly growth rate of 10.21%.
Operator Wise Subscriber Additions [Jan 2015]
After nearly 6 months, Bharti Airtel has topped the charts for new subscriber additions on their network. Idea Cellular has been the leading the charts over past few months.
Airtel witnessed 2.835 million new additions in month of Jan 2015, followed by Idea Cellular who managed to add 2.35 million to their kitty.
BSNL’s horror run has continued and they lost over 1.2 million subscribers.
Among other operators, Reliance added Vodafone added 1.8M followed by Aircel (942K) and Uninor (886k).
BSNL’s market share has now fallen to 8.42 percent from double digit share they had six months back. Bharti Airtel now commands 23.11% market share followed by Vodafone (18.95%) and Idea (16.05%).
When it comes to performance over past 12 months, Idea is the leader with addition of 18.8 million subscribers to their kitty, followed by Vodafone (16.8M) and Bharti Airtel (14.97M)
Here is a chart showing operator additions over past year.
Top 8 Mobile Operators in Numbers
| # | Operator | Total Subscriber Count (till Dec 2014) |
| 1 | Bharti Airtel | 220,050,698 |
| 2 | Vodafone | 180,494,231 |
| 3 | Idea | 152,885,867 |
| 4 | Reliance | 106,608,748 |
| 5 | BSNL | 80,147,608 |
| 6 | Aircel | 79,615,899 |
| 7 | Tata | 66,467,449 |
| 8 | Telewings / Uninor | 44,488,700 |
[Trai Jan Report]
[…] bad run for six month in a row. They lost over 2.5 million subscribers, nearly double of what they did in January 2015. In last 12 months BSNL has lost over 17 million subscribers (See chart no. 4). On the other hand […]