According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the country?s telecom subscriber base increased from 903.1 million in June 2013 to 904.5 million in July 2013. The operators added 1.4 million new subscribers in July.
During the period under review, wireless operators added 1.5 million subscribers, while wireline operators lost 0.1 million users. The subscriber base in urban areas increased from 545.5 million in June 2013 to 548.9 million in end-July 2013. Subscription in rural areas decreased from 357.6 million to 355.6 million during the same period.
For the period under review, Aircel led the pecking order and added 7,55,000 new subscribers to take its total subscriber base to 61.7 million. It was followed by Reliance Communications and Bharti Airtel, which added 5,12,000 and 4,76,000 subscribers respectively in the period under purview. The country?s second largest operator Vodafone India lost the highest number of subscribers in July 2013. The operator lost 6,10,000 subscribers and its customer base stood at 155 million.
As per the TRAI, the overall urban teledensity increased from 145.4 per cent in June 2013 to 146 per cent in July 2013, whereas rural teledensity decreased from 41.9 per cent to 41.6 per cent during the same period. The overall teledensity increased from 73.50 per cent in June 2013 to 73.54 per cent cent in July 2013.
The largest number of subscriber additions were from the category A and metro circles. Service providers added 1.6 million and 0.4 million subscribers in these circles respectively. Meanwhile, operators added 0.3 million subscribers in category C circles, while they lost 0.8 million subscribers in category B circles.
The broadband subscriber base increased from 15.19 million in June 2013 to 15.24 million.
