 "Telephone subscriber base in India declines: TRAI")
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released the latest numbers as part of its Highlights on Telecom Subscription Data as on November 30, 2012. As per the newest figures, the number of telephone subscribers in India decreased to 921.47 million at the end of November, 2012 from 935.18 million at the end of October 2012, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of -1.47 percent. TRAI elaborated that the share of urban subscribers declined to 62.70 percent from 63.17 percent, whereas the share of rural subscribers has increased to 37.30 percent in the month of November 2012. With this, the overall Teledensity in India decreased to 75.55 at the end of November, 2012 from 76.75 of the previous month.
As for the wireless segment of the market, private operators hold 88.19 percent of the wireless market share (based on subscriber base) where as BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU operators, hold only 11.81 percent market share.
Sees a decline again (Image credit: Getty Images)
By the end of November 2012, about 77.13 million subscribers have submitted their requests to different service providers for porting their mobile number. In MNP Zone-I (Northern and Western India) Rajasthan recorded most number of requests (7.33 million) followed by Maharashtra (6.67 million), whereas in MNP Zone-II (Southern and Eastern) maximum number of requests have been received in Karnataka (9.62 million) followed by Andhra Pradesh Service area (7.22 million). In the month of November 2012, total number of subscribers who have submitted their request for MNP is 5.36 million.
Moving further to the broadband segment, the report highlighted that total broadband subscriber base has increased from 14.81 million at the end of October 2012 to 14.88 million at the end of November 2012, there by showing a monthly growth of 0.47 percent. Yearly growth in broadband subscribers is 13.33 percent during the last one year (November 2011 to November 2012).
As on November 30, 2012, there are 159 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that are providing broadband services in the country. Out of this, only 101 ISPs have provided data for the month of November 2012, whereas for the rest of the ISPs, data from previous month has been retained (Data from top 10 ISPs, which constitute 93.01 percent of the total subscriber base, have been received for the month of November 2012). Top five ISPs in terms of market share (based on subscriber base) are: BSNL (9.79 million), Bharti Airtel (1.39 million), MTNL (1.08 million), Hathway (0.37 million) and You Broadband (0.29 million).
The wireline subscriber base declined from 30.95 million at the end of October 2012 to 30.87 million at the end of November 2012. Net reduction in wireline subscriber base was 0.08 million. The share of urban subscribers increased from 77.29 percent to 77.34 percent, whereas share of rural subscribers declined from 22.71 percent to 22.66 percent. The overall wireline Teledensity has marginally decreased from 2.54 in October 2012 to 2.53 in November 2012, with urban and rural Teledensity being 6.44 and 0.82 respectively. BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU operators hold 79.66 percent of the wireline market share.
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