New Delhi: Registering a marginal growth, Indian telecom subscriber base crossed 90 crore-mark in May this year after almost two years.
The base grew by 0.34 per cent to reach 90.005 crore, according to Trai data.
This is the second time the subscriber base is breaching the 90 crore-mark. Earlier in June 2012, it had touched 96.55 crore. Since then the base has been shrinking steadily. The first time it crossed the 90 crore-mark was in September 2011.
"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased to 900.05 million at the end of May, 2013 from 897.02 million at the end of April 2013, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.34 per cent," TRAI said in a report today.
Mobile or wireless subscriber base increased from 86.7 crore in April 2013 to 87 crore at the end of May 2013, registering a monthly growth of 0.37 per cent.
Reliance Communications led the growth in mobile business by adding over 12 lakh new customers, followed by Vodafone with over 9 lakh new customers, Idea Cellular 8.67 lakh, Airtel 8.51 lakh, Aircel 2.77 lakh new customers.
New operator Videocon saw maximum growth in percentage terms during the month. The mobile subscriber base of Videocon grew by 6.79 per cent to 22.85 lakhs in May from 21.39 in previous month.
State-run BSNL and MTNL lost 9 lakh and 97,583 customers respectively in May taking their total customer base to 9.80 crore and 48 lakhs respectively.
Bharti Airtel maintained its lead in overall market share with total subscriber base of over 18.96 crore. Airtel leadership was followed by Vodafone with over 15.46 crore customers. RCom and Idea Cellular's total customer base stood very close to each other at 12.48 crore and 12.37 crore
respectively.
Of the total 87 crore mobile subscribers, 72.7 crore were active on the date of assessment was done for the month of May 2013, TRAI said.
The fixed or wireline segment growth declined from 2.99 crore at the end of April 2013 to 2.98 crore at the end of May 2013 mainly due to BSNL losing 1.49 lakh customers. Vodafone, however, emerged as top gainer during the month by adding 3,510 new fixed line customers.
The overall teledensity in India increased to 73.33 per cent at the end of May, 2013 from 73.16 in the previous month.
Total broadband subscriber base increased from 1.5 crore at the end of April 2013 to 1.51 crore at the end of May 2013, there by showing a monthly growth of 0.23 per cent.
"Yearly growth in broadband subscribers is 5.75 per cent during the last one year," TRAI said.
BSNL led the broadband market with 99.6 crore customers, followed by Bharti Airtel with 14 lakh customers, MTNL around 11 lakh, Hathway 3.6 lakh and You Broadband 3.1 lakh customers.
In May, around 9.3 crore customers, over 10 per cent of total mobile subscriber base, requested to change their existing operator using Mobile Number Portability facility.
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