Telephone Subscriber Base Grows to 105.88 Crores in March: Trai

The total telephone subscriber base in the country rose marginally in March to 105.88 crores on the back of growth in wireless as well as wireline users.

The overall user base stood at 105.18 crores at the end of February, sectoral regulator Trai said on Wednesday.

The wireless subscriber base increased by 0.68 percent to 103.36 crores at the end of March, from 102.66 crores last month.

As for the wireline, the subscriber base arrested its decline and rose marginally to 2.522 crores at the end of March, from 2.521 crores in February.

The overall tele-density in the country went up to 83.36 percent at the end of March, from 82.89 percent last month.

The urban tele-density grew to 154.01 percent and rural tele-density to 51.37 percent.

In the wireless space, private access service providers held 91.30 percent market share whereas BSNL and MTNL accounted for only 8.70 percent.

In wireline though, the two state-run companies enjoy a market share of 72.42 percent while private operators' stood at 27.58 percent.

The country's top operator Bharti Airtel added 25.47 lakh wireless subscribers to take its base to 25.12 crores whereas BSNL continued with its solid pace of addition with 15.19 lakh subscribers joining its network. The user base of BSNL stood at 8.63 crores at March-end.

While Vodafone added 12 lakh subscribers to take its base to 19.79 crores, Idea Cellular got 4.46 lakh users more to increase its base to 17.50 crores.

Reliance Communications added 5.02 lakh subscribers with its base at 10.24 crores whereas Aircel brought in 4.08 lakh additional users to grow its base to 8.70 crores at the end of March.

For Telenor, an additional 7.77 lakh subscribers came on board with its base rising to 5.24 crores while Tata Teleservices lost 1.80 lakh subscribers with the base dropping to 6 crores.

The state-run MTNL also lost 73,499 subscribers as its base stood at 35.60 lakh in the said period.

Sistema Shyam Teleservices and Videocon Telecom also lost 53,386 subscribers and 1.64 lakh subscribers, respectively.

The number of broadband subscribers increased to 14.97 crores at the end of March from 14.48 crores at the end of February, with a monthly growth rate of 3.37 percent.

"In March 2016, a total of 44 lakh requests were received for mobile number portability," Trai added.