According to the Indian Telecom regulator TRAI, India added 2.9 million “active” subscribers during the month of September 2013, while it lost 6.1 million total connections during the month.
The total connections was pulled by Reliance Communications (RCOM) which lost around 10.49 million connections (around 8% of its user base) in September 2013. The telco also lost 0.9 million active subscribers during the quarter and slipped one position to the fourth position in the mobile operator leader board.
Note that the number of mobile users in the country is likely to be much less that the 738.86 million active connection base (which is around 84.87% of the total), since this includes multi-SIM users, and the TRAI mistakenly reports “connections” as subscribers.
The other thing worth noticing is the dominance of the top three telecom operators, as well as the top four: The combination of Airtel, Idea and Vodafone, which tends to increase rates together, accounts for 54.7% of the total mobile connections in India, and 61.8% of the active connections. With RCOM, the top four telcos account for 68% of the total mobile connections in India and 76.6% of the active connections.
That dominance is increasing: the top three telcos accounted for 92.31% of the active connection connections growth, although it dips to 61% if RCOM is taken into account, due to a significant decline on RCOM’s active connection base.
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The split between various telecom operators, in terms of active connection
Active Connection Base
The Active connection data represents peak VLR (Visitor Location Register) data for the month. Some stats:
– There were 738.86 million active connection in the month of September.
– Idea has 97.19% of its connections active – the maximum among all the operators.
– Vodafone has the second highest active connection base of 95.71%, followed by Airtel at 95.26%.
In terms of the number of active connections, Airtel leads with 184.22 million connections followed by Vodafone at 148.87 million connections.
Mobile Operator Leaderboard For September 2013:
– Vodafone added 1.20 million connections, taking its connection base to 155.54 million.
– Idea added 1.20 million connections, taking its connection base to 127.22 million.
– Airtel added 1.16 million connections, taking its connection base to 193.38 million.
– RCOM lost 10.49 million connections, taking its connection base to 116.26 million.
– In terms of active connections, Maharashtra leads with 90.99% active connections, followed by Assam, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal. Tamil Nadu has just 74.71% active connections, the lowest among all circles.
– Tamil Nadu has the most number of connections, with 73,309,135 connections. UP (East) is second with 72,749,708 connections and Maharashtra is third, with 68,683,628 connections.
– Bharti Airtel holds the maximum percentage market share of wireless connections at 22.21%, followed by Vodafone at 17.87%, Idea at 14.61%, Reliance at 13.35% and BSNL at 11.24%.
Related:
– August 2013: 735.91M Active Mobile Connections In India
– July 2013: India Has 15.24M Broadband, 731.39M Active Mobile Connections
– June 2013: India Has 15.19M Broadband, 731.44M Active Mobile Connections
– May 2013: India Has 15.13M Broadband, 727.92M Active Mobile Connections
– April 2013: India Has 15.09M Broadband Connections; 724.48M Active Mobile Base
– March 2013: India Has 15.05M Broadband Connections; 722.96M Active Mobile Base
– February 2013: India Has 15M Broadband Connections; 712.5M Active Mobile Connections
