Telephone Subscriber Base Jumped to Over 1.05 Billion in February: Trai

The overall telephone subscriber base stood at 1.0432 billion at the end of January, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said on Tuesday.

"Total wireless subscriber base increased from 101.79 crores at the end of January-16 to 102.66 crores at the end of February-16, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of 0.85 percent," it said.

The wireline subscriber base though declined to 252 million at the end of February from 253 million in the previous month.

"BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU access service providers, held 72.54 percent of the wireline market share," Trai said.

The wireless tele-density in the country increased to 80.91 percent at the end of February from 80.30 percent in January.

"As on February 29, 2016, the private access service providers held 91.38 percent market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL had only a market share of 8.62 percent," Trai said.

Bharti Airtel added 2.9 million subscribers to take its base to 248.6 million at the end of February whereas Vodafone added 2.034 million users and its base increased to 196.7 million.

Idea Cellular added 14.63 lakh subscribers to increase its base to 17.46 crore and Reliance Communications added 6.99 lakh users to take its base to 10.19 crore.

Aircel added 610,000 subscribers and Telenor added 250,000 to take their respective bases to 86.6 million and 51.6 million. State-run BSNL added 1.393 million subscribers to increase its base to 84.8 million whereas MTNL added 10,696 users to take its base to 3.634 million.

Tata Teleservices lost 524,000 subscribers and its base has shrunk to 60.2 million. Sistema Shyam Teleservices and Videocon also lost 150,000 and 22,299 users respectively. The overall subscriber base of Sistema stood at 7.744 million and Videocon at 6.727 million.

The broadband subscribers increased from 140.1 million at the end of January to 144.8 million at the end of February with a monthly growth rate of 3.40 percent.

Top five service providers constituted 83.60 percent market share of the total broadband subscribers. "These service providers were Bharti Airtel (36.9 million), Vodafone (26.4 million), Idea Cellular (22.2 million), BSNL (19.9 million) and Reliance Communications (15.6 million)," Trai said.

Trai said in February, a total of 5.1 million requests were received for mobile number portability (MNP). "With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 19.96 crores at the end of January-16 to 20.47 crores at the end of February-16, since the implementation of MNP," Trai added.