No. of Group Company Subscribers Market Share Airtel(GSM) 107996533 23.96% Reliance (CDMA + GSM) 83670477 18.

56% Vodafone Essar(GSM) 80874460 17.94% BSNL(GSM) 52056417 11.55% IDEA(GSM) 50058471 11.11% Tata (CDMA) 42789210 9.49% Aircel(GSM) 24415514 5.42% MTNL(GSM) 4352781 0.97% Loop Mobile(GSM) 2417446 0.54% MTS (CDMA) 1732125 0.38% HFCL (CDMA) 380288 0.08% Total (All India) 450743722

The number of telephone subscribers in India has grown at a rate of 0.83 per cent MoM. It has increased to 951.34 million at the end of March12 from 943.49 million in Feb12. This has been reported by the TRAI today. While urban areas added 1.71 million subscriptions in a month, rural subscription grew at a rapid pace of 6.14 million during the same period.

It is interesting to know that while the share of rural subscribers has increased to 34.77 per cent MoM, urban share has declined by 0.36 per cent. With this, the overall Tele-density in India reaches to 78.66 at the end of March, 2012 from 78.10 of the previous month. As per the data reported by various service providers, about 41.88 million subscribers have submitted number portability requests, by the end of March 2012. In Northern & Western India the maximum number of requests has been received in Gujarat, 3.88 million, followed by 3.71 million in Rajasthan. In the Southern & Eastern zone Karnataka tops the list with 4.53 million request followed by Andhra Pradesh, 3.99 million. The TRAI report says that the total Wireless subscriber base with Feb-Mar12 increased from 911.17 million to 919.17 Million, registering a growth of 0.88 per cent. On one hand where wireless teledensity saw an increase, wireline teledensity fell to 2.66 in March12, with urban and rural teledensity being 6.73 and 0.89 respectively. While Bharti Airtel saw the maximum market share, 19.72 per cent, the lowest was seen by HFCL, 0.14 per cent. Private operators hold 88.65 per cent of the wireless market share where as BSNL and MTNL, two PSU operators hold only 11.35 per cent market share.

After few months of 2011 registering close to 20 million Mobile Subscriber additions, April registered relatively lower 15 million subscriber additions. Although lower, I am quite sure that it is still the highest monthly subscriber additions anywhere in the world !

According to figures released by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), India now has total of 861.48 million Telecom subscribers (826.93 mln Wireless + 34.55 wireline subscribers)

Highlights of Indian Telecom Subscriber Additions in April 2011

India added 15.34 million mobile subscribers registering a monthly growth of 1.89% Wireline Subscribers declined by 180k and the figure now stands at 34.55 million. The Total of 861.48 million Telecom subscribers consist of 573.36 ml Urban & 288.12 mln Rural Subscribers. 9.38 mln Urban subscribers were added as compared to 5.97 mln in rural areas. Urban Teledensity now stands at whooping 159.63% as compared to 34.47% in Rural India Overall Tele-density in India reaches to 72.08 at the end of April 2011 from 70.43 of the previous month Mobile Number Portability requests has increased from 64.23 lakh subscribers at the end of March 2011 to 85.41 lakh subscribers at the end of April 2011. Private Telecom operators hold 88.21% of the mobile market share where as the 2 PSUs (BSNL and MTNL) hold only 11.79% mobile market share.

Telecom Operator Market Share as on 30th April 2011

Bhartis Market share decreased slightly from 19.99% in March to 19.91% in April 2011, while Reliance increased it market share from 16.72% to 16.77% as compared to previous month. Vodafone (16.56%) stands at 3rd way ahead of BSNL (11.13%), whose market share is reducing rapidly. I think in TRAIs next report we should see Idea taking over BSNL in the fourth position!

Operator wise Telecom Subscriber Additions in April 2011

Reliance added 2.94 Million subscribers or 19.15% of all subscribers added in April 2011, while Idea added 2.45 million new subscribers to their kitty. Bharti, relatively added lower numbers (2.41 Mln) followed by Vodafone (2.40 mln). It is very surprising that BSNL did very well last month adding close to 1.5 million new subscribers to its kitty and this month it managed to add only a miniscule 173k. I am not sure how BSNL witnessed such a major fall. As far as MTNL goes, the growth seems to have come to a stand still adding only 367 new subscribers!

Growth in Broadband Subscribers

The lesser we talk about these numbers the better it is Indias total Broadband subscriber base has increased from 11.87 million in March 2011 to 12.01 million in April 2011, there by showing a growth of 1.17 %.

Top three players drive mobile growth in India

By Mary Lennighan, Total Telecom Monday 11 July 2011

State-owned players suffer in fixed and mobile markets, latest TRAI figures show. India's mobile subscriber base rose to 840.28 million as of the end of May, with the top three operators adding around 2.5 million users each, according to the latest figures from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Meanwhile in the fixed-line space the number of connections fell slightly to 34.4 million as the stateowned incumbents bled customers. There was some growth from the private players though, led by Tata and Bharti Airtel. Mobile market leader Bharti Airtel added 2.45 million new users in May to take its total customer base to 167.07 million and give it a total market share of close to 20%. However, second-placed Reliance snapped up a bigger share of new customers: 18.75% to Bharti's 18.35%. Reliance's 141.16 million-strong customer base, including CDMA and GSM connections, give it a 16.8% share of India's mobile market. Third-placed Vodafone consolidated its position with 2.45 million net additions in May. While the majority of India's mobile operators are enjoying strong customer growth, the country's state-owned operators continue to have a difficult time. BSNL claimed an 11.05% share of the total market as of the end of May, down slightly from the 11.44% it recorded just under a year ago. The operator added 823,051 customers in May, or just 6.16% of total new additions. By contrast, relative newcomer Uninor added 1.14 million customers in May, taking its total market share to 3.02% up from less than 1% at the end of June 2010. MTNL, which operates in Delhi and Mumbai only, has also seen its share slide in the past 11 months. It ended May 2011 with 0.65% of the market, down from 0.82%. BSNL's troubles stem in part from the difficulties it faced expanding its network, making it hard for the telco to keep up with demand. On Monday it made its latest move to rectify that by inviting equipment vendors to submit bids to supply 14.37 million new lines. The company will employ an online auction method to award the contract in a bid to preempt any concerns over transparency and avoid a repeat performance of recent failed tenders; BSNL cancelled a multi-billion-dollar contract for 93 million lines last year after its procurement methods were questioned. BSNL still claims the lion's share of India's relatively small fixed-line market, but its influence there is also dwindling. The telco lost close to 165,000 fixed-line customers in May, while MTNL lost over 13,000, as the whole market contracted. However, there was some growth for the private players. Tata added 11,534 fixed connections and Bharti 10,170, taking their total market shares to 3.79% and 9.64% respectively. BSNL's market share stands at 72.27%, followed by MTNL with 10.02%.

However, in case of private operators, the total percentage share has increased from 65.32 per cent to 85.58 per cent during the same period. The Department of Telecom has attributed the reason for this decline predominantly to surrender of landlines and limited growth in mobile phone services. "As far as the limited growth in mobile telephony is concerned, it has been attributed to higher competitive mobile market, delay in capacity augmentation resulting in congestion and poor quality of services, and lack of marketing activities and poor visibility of products," the report said. While distribution network is weak, particularly in rural areas, the uptime of mobile towers has been adversely affected due to indifferent attitude of IP vendors, which impacted the performance of the public firms, it added. Even in wireline segment, private operators have added more subscribers whereas in the case of public operators, there is a decline in the user base. "The total number of wireline telephones in public operators network in 2007 was 37.46 million, which declined to 28.03 million in July 2011, while the private operators increased their wireline base to 6.15 million in July 2011 from 3.31 million in 2007," the report said. In wireless segment too, BSNL and MTNL's market shares declined to 11.44 per cent in January, 2012 from 20.55 per cent in 2007, a decline of about 50 per cent. "The situation is opposite for the private service providers. From a share percentage of 79.45 per cent during 2007, it has grown to 88.56 per cent as on January 31, 2012," the report said. BSNL has performed "poorly" in its mission to increase the rural wireless telephony in the country, the report said. "Its share percentage has declined from 29.26 per cent during 2007 to 11.02 per cent as on December 31, 2011," the report said. On the other hand, the share of private operators in rural telephony has grown to 88.98 per cent in December 31, 2011 from 70.74 per cent in 2007, it added.