The number of Indians with a telephone connection has increased from 910.14 million at the end of November, 2013 to 915.19 million at the end of December 2013. This indicates a monthly growth of 0.56%, indicating the growth in the telecom market.
According to the latest report from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), in these figures the share of urban subscribers has marginally declined from 60.06% to 60.03%, whereas share of rural subscribers has marginally increased from 39.94% to 39.97% in the month of December 2013. Overall Teledensity in the country has increased from 73.69 at Nov end to 74.02 at December end in the year 2013.
Delhi takes a double lead in registering highest teledensity at 226.29 milions at the end of Dec 2013, with Tamilnadu standing at the second position at 110.07 millions. The overall urban teledensity has increased from 144.46 to 144.95 and rural teledensity has increased from 42.43 to 42.67 in this month.
Out of the total 886.30 million wireless subscribers, 762.40 million were active on the date of Peak Visitor Location Register (VLR) for the month of December 2013. The proportion of VLR subscribers is approximately 86.02% of the total wireless subscriber base reported by the service providers.
Service Provider wise, Idea leads the tally with 100.98% followed by Bharti (96.23%) and Vodafone (95.63%). Loop has the lowest proportion of VLR with 47.39%. Circle-wise, Maharashtra has the highest proportion of VLR subscribers with 92.24% followed by West Bengal (92.06%) and Assam (90.17%). Tamil Nadu (incl. Chennai) has the lowest VLR proportion with 74.08%.
The startling revelation in the report is the rise of mobile number portability (MNP) cases. 104.79 million subscribers opted for MNP by the end of October, last year. This number increased to 106.87 million by the end of November 2013 and 109.37 million subscribers by the end of December 2013.
According to another release from the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, there are 55.20 million broadband subscribers in the country at the end of December, 2013. As per the reports received from the service providers, 14.54 million use broadband on wired devices, 40.27 are mobile devices users (phones + dongles) and 0nly 0.39 millions are other wireless devices (Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, Point-to-Point Radio & VSAT).
The top five broadband service providers who constitute 82.36% market share of total broadband subscribers in the country are - BSNL (16.54 million), Bharti (10.88 million), Reliance (6.98 million), Idea (5.87 million) and Vodafone (5.20 million).
