Telecom companies' user base in India up 1 per cent on month
Driven by wireless connections, the total number of telephone users in the country increased by one crore in February, taking the subscriber base to 93.19 crore, up 1.08 per cent from January.
"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 922.04 million at the end of January, 2014 to 931.95 million at the end of February, 2014, thereby showing a monthly growth of 1.08 per cent," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said in a statement on Wednesday.
The growth as usual was driven by wireless connection, mobile and dongle based users, while landline services continued to decline.
The wireless subscriber base increased from 89.33 crore in January to 90.33 crore at the end of February, 2014 - a growth of 1.12 per cent.
Out of this, the maximum of 78 crore customers, 86.37 per cent of total wireless connections, were found active in February.
Landline subscriber base declined from 2.87 crore at the end of January to 2.85 crore at the end of February.
Idea Cellular led growth in wireless segment by adding over 33.32 lakh new customers, taking its total subscriber base to 13.35 crore.
Bharti Airtel added 26.56 lakh customers and Vodafone 21.55 lakh new customers.
Telewings (Uninor), which has operations in six out of 22 service areas, stood fourth in terms of new addition with 9.7 lakh new customers.
Aircel followed Uninor by adding 7 lakh new customers. Videocon added 5.8 lakh (includes Quadrant), while Reliance Communications added 2.26 lakh users during the period.
State-run BSNL and MTNL added 1.18 lakh and 12,037 new customers respectively.
Sistema Shyam Teleservices, which operates under MTS brand name, lost 6.53 lakh customers.
Tata Teleservices and Loop Mobile were also among companies that lost customers during month.
TTSL lost 47,594 subscribers and Loop, which operates in Mumbai only, lost 10,039.
In February, 24.71 lakh people requested for changing telecom operators under mobile number portability scheme, taking total number of request till date to over 11.4 crore.
Total broadband subscribers in the country, dominated by mobile phone and dongle based users, grew by about 2 per cent to 5.8 crore in February from 5.69 crore in January.
Broadband subscriber using mobile phones and dongles grew by about 2 per cent to 4.28 crore, followed wire-line broadband connection at 1.48 crore. Other types of broadband connection stood at 3.9 lakh.
Tele-density in the country increased from 74.50 at the end of January to 75.23 at the end of February.
