India’s Broadband subscriber base recorded a slight decrease from 15.01 million at the end of January 2013 to 15 million at the end of February 2013, there by showing a monthly decline of 0.12%. But still the broadband sector in India reports a healthy yearly growth of 10.76% during the last one year from February 2012 to February 2013, according to the latest Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) report on Telecom Subscription Data as on 28th February 2013.
Govt owned BSNL with 9.90 million subscribers topped the broadband market followed by Bharti Airtel with 1.40 million subscribers and MTNL with 1.08 million subscribers.
Telephone subscribers base in India decreased to 892.02 million at the end of February, 2013 from 893.15 million at the end of January 2013, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of -0.13%. Out of this Wireless Segment (GSM, CDMA & FWP) also showed a decrease in subscriber base from 862.62 million in January 2013 to 861.66 million at the end of February 2013. However, the decline in the wireless subscriber base, which has been witnessed since July 2012 primarily due to telecom operators cleaning up their subscribers list which are inactive for more than two months, has become gradually less.
India’s top three telecom operators have captured most of the new mobile subscribers during this period with Idea Cellular adding the maximum of 2,890,073 mobile subscribers followed by Bharti Airtel with 2,428,533 mobile subscribers and Vodafone India adding up 2,186,176 mobile subscribers. On the losing side Unitech, which recently shutdown its operation on several telecom circles due to Supreme Court ruling on 2G case, loosed around 8,348,698 mobile subscribers followed by Aircel losing 698,506 mobile subscribers and Tata which owns Tata Docomo lose around 692,239 mobile subscribers.
Bharti Airtel retained its top position with 21.66% market share followed by Vodafone taking the second spot with 17.40% share and Reliance Communication (RCOM) in the third place with 13.92% share closely followed by Idea cellular with 13.84%. Out of the total 861.66 million wireless subscribers, 712.49 million were active on the date of Peak VLR for the month of February 2013.
After the Supreme court rule that asked operators to port out their subscribers from telecom circles they don’t have active spectrum license, MNP request has been on rise. According to TRAI report by the end of February 2013 about 86.83 million subscribers have submitted their MNP requests to different service providers for porting their mobile number. Karnataka (10.4 million) users topped in MNP request followed by Rajasthan (8.2 million) and Andhra Pradesh (7.8 million).
Source – TRAI