Oct 2013: 744.24M Active Mobile Connections In India

According to the Indian Telecom regulator TRAI, India added 5.3 million “active” connections during the month of October 2013, while it added 4.8 million total connections during the month. This is unusual and indicates that connections that were perhaps inactive in September, became active in October 2013.

The number of mobile users in the country is likely to be much less that the 744.24 million active connection base (which is around 85.01% of the total), since this includes multi-SIM users, and the TRAI mistakenly reports “connections” as subscribers. Perhaps, in October, people started using their other SIM.

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 54.8% of the total mobile connections in India, and 61.9% of the active connections. With RCOM, the top four telcos account for 68.1% of the total mobile connections in India and 76.5% of the active connections.

* The split between various telecom operators, in terms of active connections

Active Connection Base

The Active connection data represents peak VLR (Visitor Location Register) data for the month. Some stats:

– There were 744.24 million active connection in the month of October.
– Idea has 97.50% of its connections active – the maximum among all the operators.
– Vodafone has the second highest active connection base of 95.69%, followed by Airtel at 95.28%.

In terms of the number of active connections, Airtel leads with 185.67 million connections followed by Vodafone at 149.94 million connections.

Mobile Operator Leaderboard For October 2013:

– Airtel added 1.48 million connections, taking its connection base to 194.87 million.
– Vodafone added 1.15 million connections, taking its connection base to 156.69 million.
– Idea added 1.14 million connections, taking its connection base to 128.37 million.

– In terms of active connections, West Bengal leads with 90.14% active connections, followed by Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Assam. Tamil Nadu has just 74.37% active connections, the lowest among all circles.

– Tamil Nadu has the most number of connections, with 73,453,749 connections. UP (East) is second with 73,238,638 connections and Maharashtra is third, with 69,029,108 connections.

– Bharti Airtel holds the maximum percentage market share of wireless connections at 22.26%, followed by Vodafone at 17.90%, Idea at 14.66%, Reliance at 13.33% and BSNL at 11.18%.

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