According to latest report released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), India has a total of 884.37 million Mobile Subscribers (counting both GSM and CDMA subscribers) as of 30th November, 2011 with a 0.34% monthly growth rate. The total number of telecom subscribers (both Wireless and Wireline) in India has been increased to 917.33 million with net addition of only 2.74 million subscribers in the current period. It’s only a growth rate of 0.30% when compared to the previous TRAI report on 31st July 2011 with a 0.74% monthly growth rate.
Further looking into the report, the Total wireless subscriber base increased from 881.40 Million in October 2011 to 884.37 Million at the end of November 2011, registering a growth of 0.34%. Although the gross addition in number of wireless subscribers during the month of November, 2011 has been 8.19 million, the net addition has been 2.97 million due to disconnection of 5.22 million from the existing wireless subscribers. The share of Urban Subscriber has marginally decreased from 65.86% to 65.73% where as share of Rural Subscribers has marginally increased from 34.14% to 34.27%. The overall wireless Tele density in India reaches 73.44.
Indian Telecom Operators Market Share as on 30.11.2011
Private operators hold 88.51% of the wireless market share where as BSNL and MTNL, two PSU operators hold only 11.49% market share.
Bharti Airtel still top’s the India’s largest telecom service operator with a market share of 19.57%, followed by Reliance Communications (Rcom) (GSM and CDMA) with 16.86% market share and third place by Vodafone India with 16.60%. This time Idea cellular grabbed the maximum number of subscribers to their network (a whopping 73.15%), followed by Uninor (62.69%) and Reliance (34.01%). Tata Teleservices ( including both Tata Indicom and Tata Docomo) are still showing massive down/negative growth in terms of subscriber acquisition with recorded a loss up to 149.95% million mobile subscribers will Nov. When looking overall mobile subscribers base in India, there is a slow down in growth when compared to previous months.
This time TRAI also included the VLR numbers in the report. A VLR (Visitor Location Register number) is a count of the number of users, who’re active during a particular time period. Out of the total 884.37 Million subscribers, 635.39 Million were active on the date of Peak VLR for the month of November 2011. The total active VLR number excludes the CDMA VLR figure of BSNL, as the service provider has not provided the VLR figures of their total CDMA subscriber base of 4.48 million. The proportion of VLR subscribers is approximately 71.85% of the total wireless subscribers base reported by the service providers.
On the MNP status, as per the data reported by the service providers, by the end of November 2011 about 258.37 lakh subscribers have submitted their MNP requests to different service providers for porting their mobile number. In the month of November-2011, total number of subscribers who have submitted their request for MNP is 26.71 lakh. It seems a fair increase in the MNP service and with new strict guidelines from TRAI, we can accept more subscribers will use the service.
Do comment your views on the changing trends of telecom industry in India.