TRAI reports that there are 5.45 million broadband subscribers in India as of December 31st 2008, up from 5.28 million in November. The total number of telephone connections is now at 384.79 million. Around 11 million wireless subscribers (GSM/CDMA/WLL) have been added during the month of December 2008 to reach 346.89 million wireless subscribers. While we await TRAI’s report on the telecom sector on the December quarter, here’s a look at the report on quarter ended September 2008, available for download here. Dial Up - Number of dial up subscribers is 12.24 million - Growth rate is still dropping – from 5.09 percent in Q1 to 4.97 percent. - Minutes of use: down to 212 minutes per month, reflecting a reduced usage of dial up Internet. In the previous quarters minutes per subscriber per month were: September 2007- 206 December 2007 – 210 March 2008 - 220 June 2008 - 225 - ARPU decreased to Rs 213.08 from Rs 225 in the quarter ending June 08 – a clear sign for providers to back out. Packages that encourage night time browsing are also hitting a wall with subscribers only spending 108.01 minutes per month (that’s about 3.6 minutes a night) on average. -In its Quality of Service report, TRAI has noted that Tata Communications does not meet the set standard of ISP node availability. It has recorded 75 minutes of unavailability per month, 45 minutes more than the allowed limit. Broadband -- 4,902,881 subscribers at the end of September 2008, of which:…
