Top telecom operators in India, keep on cutting down all inactive mobile users in their network, thus a decline in the overall Mobile (GSM+CDMA) subscribers in India from 908.36 million in August 2012 to 906.62 million at the end of September 2012, registering a monthly growth of -0.19%. Its been the third consecutive month, we are seeing decrease in Mobile subscriber base, as previous month TRAI reported a -0.56% negative growth.
Bharti Airtel reported the highest loss with 981,621 mobile subscribers, followed by Vodafone India losing 686,183 mobile subscribers and Idea cellular losing 508,782 mobile subscribers. Other major telecom operators Tata Docomo, Sistema (MTS) and Videocon also reported lose in mobile subscribers during September 2012. On the winning side, Aircel gained around 655,117 mobile subscribers during the period followed by Govt owned BSNL with 393,016 mobile subscribers and Reliance (GSM+CDMA) with 213,444 subscribers.
With declining subscriber base Bharti Airtel retained its top position with 20.51% market share followed by Vodafone taking the second spot with 16.84% share and Reliance in the third place with 14.87% share. Private operators hold 88.43% of the wireless market share in India (based on subscriber base) where as BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU operators hold only 11.57% market share. State Owned BSNL has been doing well with 10.99% market share, becoming the 5th largest telecom operator in India.
Out of the total 906.62 million wireless subscribers, 698.96 million were active on the date of Peak VLR for the month of September 2012. The proportion of VLR subscribers is approximately 77.10% of the total wireless subscriber base reported by the service providers. When taking telecom circle-wise Maharashtra has the highest proportion of VLR subscribers with 84.71% followed by J&K (84.55%) and Madhya Pradesh (81.99%).
Mobile Number Portability (MNP) has seen greater adoption ever since introduced in India. As per the latest TRAI report, MNP requests increased from 64.92 million subscribers at the end of August 2012 to 69.78 million at the end of September 2012, a 4.86 million increase in MNP requests. Karnataka accounted for highest (8.46 million) MNP request followed by Rajasthan (6.70 million) and Andhra Pradesh (6.55million).
Wireline subscriber base declined from 31.21 million at the end of August 2012 to 31.08 Million at the end of September 2012. Net reduction in wireline subscriber base was 0.13 million.
Broadband subscriber base has increased from 14.82 million at the end of August 2012 to 15.08 million at the end of September 2012, registering a monthly growth of 1.71%. There are 157 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who are providing broadband services in the country. BSNL topping the chart with 9.58 million broadband subscribers (63.6 % market share) followed by Bharti Airtel with 1.39 million subscribers (9.2%) and MTNL with 1.06 million subscribers (7%).
Read the complete TRAI telecom report highlighting the Telecom Subscription Data as on 31st August 2012 here.