Indian rural telecom has faced downturn – despite service providers’ special packages – as mobile user base declined by 2 million in July 2013.
TRAI, India’s telecom regulator, on Friday said net mobile additions declined 0.57 percent or by 2 million to 349.09 million from 351.10 million in June.
In July, according to TRAI data, Indian urban mobile user base increased by 3.52 million or 0.67 percent to 525.78 million from 522.27 million in June.
Aircel topped the list of net additions in July whereas Vodafone user based decline substantially.
The Maxis-owned Aircel had a net addition of 755,523 users, while Vodafone lost 610,694 customers.
Reliance Communications net addition was 512,152, Bharti Airtel 476,593, Uninor 463,431, Videocon 353,787, Idea Cellular 300,099.
The share of urban wireless subscribers has increased from 59.80 percent to 60.10 percent whereas share of rural wireless subscribers has decreased from 40.20 percent to 39.90 percent. Reasons for a significant drop in user base in rural India are not known. Indian telecoms are facing pressure to verify users.
TRAI statistics says total wireless subscriber base increased from 873.36 million in June to 874.88 million in July 2013, registering a monthly growth of 0.17 percent.
The overall wireless Teledensity in India has reached 71.13 in July from 71.08 of previous month.
Wireless subscription in urban areas increased to 525.78 million in July.
The urban wireless Teledensity has increased from 139.16 to 139.87 whereas rural Teledensity has decreased from 41.14 to 40.88.
Indian wireline user base
Wireline subscriber base declined from 29.73million in June 2013 to 29.58 million in July. Net reduction in wireline subscriber base was 0.15 million at the rate of 0.50 percent.
The share of urban subscribers has decreased from 78.11 percent to 78.0 percent whereas share of rural subscribers has increased from 21.89 percent to 22.0 percent.
The overall wireline Teledensity has decreased from 2.42 in June 2013 to 2.40 in July 2013, with urban and rural Teledensity being 6.14 and 0.76 respectively.
BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU operators hold 78.65 percent of the Wireline market share.
Indian broadband user base
Total Broadband subscriber base has increased from 15.19 million in June to 15.24 million in July, up 0.33 percent. Yearly growth in broadband subscribers is 3.79 percent during the last one year (July 2012 to July 2013).
Top five ISPs in terms of market share (based on subscriber base) are: BSNL (9.97 million), Bharti Airtel (1.43 million), MTNL (1.10 million), Hathway (0.37 million) and You Broadband (0.32 million).
