Number of telephone subscribers see a slight decline in July-August: TRAI

For the second consecutive month, the number of telephone subscribers in India slightly declined from 1,210.71 million at the end of July 2017 to 1,209.61 million at the end of August 2017, thereby showing a monthly degrowth of 0.09 percent, data released by the **Telecom Regulatory Authority of India** (TRAI) showed on 9 November. [caption id=“attachment_4144585” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representative Image. Reuters[/caption] The urban subscription increased from 702.97 million at the end of July to 707.33 million at the end of August. However, the rural subscription declined from 507.74 million to 502.28 million during the same period. The monthly growth rates of urban and rural subscription were 0.62 percent and (-)1.07 percent, respectively, during August. Total wireless subscribers (GSM, CDMA & LTE) declined from 1,186.79 million at the end of July to 1,185.84 million at the end of August, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of (-)0.08 percent. The wireless tele-density in India declined from 92.03 at the end of July to 91.87 at the end of August. The net decline in the wireline subscriber base was 0.15 million with a monthly decline rate of 0.63 percent. During the month of August 2017, a total of 5.03 million requests were received for **mobile number portability** (MNP). With this, the cumulative MNP requests since the implementation of MNP increased from 294.87 million at the end of July 2017 to 299.90 million at the end of August 2017.