What’s a few million when you have 932 million active mobile connections in India? The Active connection data represents peak VLR (Visitor Location Register) data for the month, so it includes users roaming from on another telecom operators network (For example, Airtel, Idea and Vodafone have Intra-circle roaming arrangements which allow 3G users from Airtel to roam on an Idea 3G network). These are counted as separate Internet connections, and there is also multi-SIM usage, so the number of connections should not be seen as active users.
Some stats:
– Airtel has the second highest active connection base of 97.42%, followed by Vodafone at 95.68%.
– There were 932.52 million active connections in the month of May 2016.
– Idea has 103.92% of connections active on its network – the highest among all telcos. TRAI says the percentage of active connections is more than 100% due to in-roamers i.e. subscribers from other operators roaming in Idea’s network.
In terms of the number of active connections, Airtel leads with 247.77 million connections followed by Vodafone at 190.09 million connections.
Mobile Operator Leaderboard For May 2016 (Total Connections):
– Airtel added 2.11 million connections, taking its connection base to 254.33 million.
– Idea added 0.85 million connections, taking its connection base to 175.54 million.
– Bsnl added 0.75 million connections, taking its connection base to 88.23 million.
– RCom lost 1.15 million connections, taking its connection base to 101.36 million.
Top 4 telcos have 76% of total active connections
The top three telecom operators in India – Vodafone, Airtel and Idea Cellular – added 1.50 million active connections in May 2016, accounting for 67% of active connections, and lost 100% of total active added connections. Along with Reliance Communications, the top four now account for 76% of active connections.
Their growth is outpacing the rest, as, together, they accounted for more active connections during the month (67%) than all the telecom operators combined, while some of the rest lost connections.
Statewise data
– In terms of active connections, Madhya Pradesh leads with 95.83% active connections, followed by Kerala, Maharashtra and West Bengal. North East has just 81.02% active connections, the lowest among all circles.
– UP (East) has the most number of connections, with 94.50 million connections (94,506,286 connections). Maharashtra is second with 84.26 million connections (84,268,281 connections) and Tamil Nadu is third with 80.92 million connections (80,928,263 connections).
– Bharti Airtel holds the maximum percentage market share of wireless connections at 24.62%, followed by Vodafone at 19.23%, Idea at 16.99%, Reliance at 9.81% and Aircel at 8.54%.
Download: Press Release
Related:
– Active Mobile connections in India declined by 2.4 million in April 2016: TRAI
– India had 936 million active mobile connections in March 2016: TRAI
– India added 7.63M active mobile connections in February 2016
– India added 5.57M active mobile connections in January’16
– India added 4.92M active mobile connections in December’15; RCOM Loses 5.92M
