Telecom user base grows marginally to 90.45 crore in October

New Delhi: The total number of telecom subscribers rose marginally to 90.45 crore at end of October this year, sectoral regulator TRAI said today.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 899.86 million at the end of September, 2013 to 904.56 million at the end of October 2013," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said in a statement.

The total number of wireless subscribers increased from 87 crore in September to 87.54 crore in October, registering a monthly growth of 0.56 per cent.

About 85 per cent of total mobile user base were found to be active customers.

"The share of urban wireless subscribers has declined from 59.75 per cent to 59.65 per cent whereas share of rural wireless subscribers has increased from 40.25 per cent to 40.35 per cent," TRAI said.

The overall teledensity - number of telephone connections for every 100 individuals - in the country increased from 73.01 in September to 73.32 in October.

From October onwards, 105 out of 153 Internet service providers started reporting broadband numbers based on new definition of providing Internet with minimum download speed of 512 kilobit per second from 256 Kbps earlier.

At the end of October 2013, there were 14.91 million wireline broadband subscribers in the country. The total number of request from subscribers to change their operators using Mobile Number Portability facility reached 10.48 crore in October.

At end of October, private operators hold 88.41 per cent of the wireless market share (based on subscriber base) whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU operators held only 11.59 per cent market share, it said.

Airtel led the growth in both wireless and wireline segment. The company added 14.88 lakh new mobile subscribers by in October taking its subscriber base to 19.48 crore.

The telecom major added 14,553 new fixed line customers where the overall segment saw decline of subscriber base from from 2.92 crore at the end of September, 2013 to 2.90 crore at the end of October, 2013.

Vodafone and Idea Cellular were close competitors in October where they added 11.51 and 11.49 lakh mobile subscribers respectively.

Aircel added 4.97 lakh, Reliance Communications 4.5 lakh, Videocon 2.78 lakh (including HFCL), Loop Mobile about 42,000 and state-run BSNL added around 39,000 new subscribers during the month.

MTNL lost 1.55 lakh mobile customers, the most by any operator during the month. Tata Teleservices too continued to lose customers. The company lost 96,500 mobile customers during the reported month and Uninor lost 21,935 mobile customers.