The number of fixed and mobile subscribers in India is likely to reach the 1 billion mark sometime this month, if recent growth rates are maintained.
The country was home to 987.3 million telecoms subscribers at the end of February, having added just over 8 million during the course of that month and 16.3 million since the start of the year, according to new figures released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday.
As such, India could well exceed 1 billion subscribers when the regulator releases its report for April.
All the growth is coming from the mobile sector. India recorded 8.24 million net mobile customer additions in February, giving it a total of 960.6 million mobile subs, while its fixed-line base slipped by 150,000 to 26.72 million.
Teledensity stands at close to 79%, but is heavily skewed towards urban areas. In rural India teledensity is just 47.16%.
In the mobile space India’s top five operators – Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications and Aircel – together added 9.75 million customers in February; Bharti alone added more than 3 million, increasing its mobile market share to 23.2%.
And Telenor’s Uninor recorded more than 665,000 net additions, maintaining its market share at 4.7%.
State-owned BSNL was the weak link. Its mobile customer base shrank by 2.55 million, while it also lost almost 163,000 fixed line customers.
The strongest performer on the fixed side was Bharti, which grew its customer base by nearly 12,000.
BSNL still controls 62.3% of India’s fixed lines, with sister company MTNL coming in second with 13.2%. Bharti is hot on MTNL’s heels though, increasing its market share to 12.7%, up by one percentage point over the past year.
