According to the monthly TRAI telecom subscription report for July 2015, Indian mobile subscriber base has now reached 983.21 million with addition of 2.4 million in the month July. Wireline subscribers continue their decline and it currently stands at 26.10 million taking the total telecom subscriber base to 1,009.31 million.
The rural subscriber witnessed a fall for the first time in over a year with a decline of 1.93 million – the decline of subscribers primarily came from states of Gujarat, J&K, U.P (east), U.P (West), Mumbai and Haryana. The decline was primarily attributed to Telewings, which lost close to million subscribers.
Here is a chart that depicts growth of mobile subscribers in India over past 18 months.
In last 2 years, not a single month has seen negative growth – the last time we say a subscriber fall was back in September 2013.
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Active Subscriber Base
Like last month, Active subscriber base witnessed much higher rise. The total number of active mobile subscribers were 885.15 million, about 4.15 mln more than in June 2015, when the active base was pegged 881M.
For the first time active subscriber percentage has gone over 90 percent. Since January 2014, the active percentage has grown by over 4 percentage points. Here is a graph that shows growth in Active mobile subscriber base over past 18 months.
Mobile Subscriber Growth Highlights [July 2015]
– With an increase of 2.4 mln in July 2015, total mobile subscriber base has reached to 983.21 million. India had 980.81 million subscribers by end of June 2015.
– Urban India witnessed a monthly subscription increase of 0.77 percent or 4.34 mln subscribers, while rural mobile subscriber base decreased by 0.46 percent or 1.93 mln.
– Urban India has a total of 567.29 million, while rural India has a total of 415.92 million mobile subscribers.
– Urban Teledensity increased to 145.13 from 144.25 in June 15, while the rural tele-density decreased to 47.84 from previous 48.10 .
– Urban mobile subscriber share stands at 57.70% as compared 42.30% of rural subscribers.
– 3.98 million new Mobile portability requests were made in month of July 2015, taking the total tally of MNP requests since launch to 167.91 mln.
– Active Mobile Subscriber base increased from 881.09 mln in June 2015 to 885.15 million in July 2015, taking the active percentage to 90.03 percent.
– Total Broadband (> 512 Kbps) subscription numbers increased from 108.85 Million at the end of Jun- 15 to 113.32 million at the end of Jul-15 with monthly growth rate of 4.10%.
Operator Wise Subscriber Additions [July 2015]
Idea Cellular has been topping the charts when it comes to new subscriber additions, however, in July Bharti Airtel added maximum mobile subscriber (1.008M) followed by Idea Cellular (0.68M). After a long time, Reliance Communication, has been able to register some good numbers adding over half a million new subscribers.
BSNL has also been losing hordes of subscribers over past few months, however July was a good month for them during which they added around 0.48M new subs.
Bharti Airtel remains the distant leader with a market share of 23.56%, followed by Vodafone (18.86%) and Idea Cellular (16.55%).
Here is the cumulative sum of subscriber added by various Indian mobile operators in last 12 months.
Idea has added maximum subscribers (20.789M), whereas BSNL has fared the worst (-8.527M) among all the operators.
Top 8 Mobile Operators in Numbers
| # | Operator | Total Subscriber Count (till July 2015) |
| 1 | Bharti Airtel | 231,670,409 |
| 2 | Vodafone | 185,449,076 |
| 3 | Idea | 162,759,491 |
| 4 | Reliance | 110,442,535 |
| 5 | BSNL | 77,836,484 |
| 6 | Aircel | 83,364,687 |
| 7 | Â Tata | 61,716,497 |
| 8 | Telewings / Uninor | 47,162,774 |
[Trai July 2015 Report]
Is this based on Sims sold and still active (Not considering the High mortality rate in sims)?. People move over to a different sim while other is still active. Then most people have 2 sims in their dual sim phones. And then many people have 2 phones. So maybe it is <500Mn people
Please see the active subscriber percentage – those stanbd at 90 percent…
Please see the active subscriber percentage – those stand at 90 percent…