At present, there’s a buzz around about the proposal of 2G spectrum auction price in India. Despite of all these, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has reported an increase in number of wireless and telephone subscribers across the country. According to the telecom regulators, at the end of April 2012, telephone subscribers in the country increased to 952.91 million, up from 951.34 million in the prior month, registering a 0.16% growth during a month period.
However, share of urban subscribers to total telephone baselines declined during this period, reached to 64.95% at the end of April this year from 65.23% in the prior month. On the other hand, share of rural sector to total telephone subscribers grew to 35.05% at the end of April 2012. The tele-density of the country recorded a meager growth at the end of April this year, reached to 78.71, from 78.66 of the previous month.
In terms of telephone subscriptions, the number declined in the Urban sector from 620.53 million at the end of the March, 2012 to 618.92 million at the end of April 2012, demonstrating a fall of 0.26%. On the contrary, the figure raised in the rural segment from 330.82 million to 334.00 million during the same period, showing a growth of 3.18%. Talking about the teledensity in the Urban area, it plunged from169.55 at the end of March this year to 168.83 at the end of April 2012.
Indiscriminately, wireless subscribers are uniformly increasing in the country and it reached to 921.02 million at the end of April 2012 from 919.17 million in the prior month, recorded a 0.20% growth. However, the share of urban subscribers has been deteriorated from 64.83% at the end of March to 64.54% at the end of April this year. Despite, the overall wireless tele-density went to 76.07 at the end of April this year in India.
It’s quite clear from the figure (beside), wireless subscription in Urban areas down to 594.45 million at the end of April 2012 from 595.90 million in the previous month, a 0.24% decline.
In context of wireless subscriptions, rural sector once shown an increment between the period March and April of this year. Number of wireless subscriptions increased from 323.27 million at the end of March 2012 to 326.57 million at the end of April 2012, a 1.02 % growth during the same period.
At the end of April 2012, Delhi was dominating in the overall teledensity, followed by Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh respectively. On the other hand, Assam and Bihar had lowest lowest teledensity respectively.
In the terms of market share, Airtel dominated with 19.90% market share at the end of April 2012, followed by Reliance, Vodafone, Idea and BSNL with 16.67%, 16.43%, 12.40% and 19.62% share respectively during the same period. Clearly, private telecom vendors were dominating at the end of April this year with 88.76% over the public sector undertakings (BSNL and MTNL), having just 11.24% market share.
Both telephone and wireless subscribers are continuously increasing month-over-month in India. It’s clear from the report that users baseline had been declined at the end of April this year compare to the prior month in the urban areas, however, which was offset by rural subscribers. Anyway, April could be considered as one of the promising month for Indian telecom industry.
Source: TRAI
