Indian Telephone Subscribers reach 900 Million, MNP, Broadband on Rise [TRAI May 2013 report]

Finally after months of negative growth and telecom operators cleaning up their inactive subscriber base, Indian telephone subscribers are now rising up reaching around 900.05 million at the end of May, 2013 according to TRAI‘s telecom subscription data as on 31st May 2013. That’s adding almost 3.03 million subscribers to the previous months (April 2013) 897.02 million subscribers, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.34%.

While considering the Wireless segment (GSM, CDMA and FWP) telecom operators added 3.18 million subscribing increasing the subscriber base from 867.02 million in April, 2013 to 870.20 million at the end of May 2013. Private operators hold the majority of the telecom market share with 88.18%, where as Govt owned BSNL and MTNL hold only 11.82% market share.

BSNL loses around 9,042,69 mobile subscribers during this period, followed by Tata Docomo losing 3,666,25 subscribers and another state owned telecom operator MTNL losing 97,583 subscriners. On the other hand Reliance Communications (RCom) added maximum number of mobile subscribers during this period by around 1,201,156 followed by Vodafone India by 910,320 subscribers and Idea cellular by 867,233 subscribers.

Bharti Airtel retained its top position with 21.79% market share followed by Vodafone India in second spot with 17.78% share and Reliance Communication (RCOM) in third spot with 14.35% share, widening its market share between Idea cellular’s 14.22% market share.

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) requests are on rise, with a total of 93.56 million subscribers opting for MNP at the end of May 2013. Karnataka (11.03 million) subscribers topped in MNP request followed by Rajasthan (9.04 million) and Andhra Pradesh (8.47 million).

India’s total Broadband subscriber base has increased from 15.09 million at the end of April 2013 to 15.13 million at the end of May 2013, there by showing a monthly growth of 0.23%. Yearly growth in broadband subscribers is 5.75% during the last one year (May 2012 to May 2013). BSNL tops in broadband subscribers with 9.96 million, followed by Bharti Airtel with 1.40 million subscribers and MTNL with 1.09 million subscribers.

Source –  TRAI