India peaks to over 900 million Cellphone Subscribers

The number of Cellphone phone subscribers in India rose to 903.73 million in January with Uninor alone signing 2.49 million new subscribers, official data showed Tuesday.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the wireless user base grew 1.11 percent with an addition of 9.88 million subscribers, from 893.84 million in December.

With this, the total number of telephone subscribers, including land line holders, touched 936.12 million, registering a growth of 1.04 percent.

Overall teledensity in India has reached 77.57 percent.

However, of the total 903.73 million wireless subscribers, only 659.97 million were active on the date of peak visitor location register (VLR).

VLR is a temporary database of subscribers who have roamed into the particular area, which it serves. Each base station in the network is served by exactly one VLR, hence a subscriber cannot be present in more than one VLR at a time.

The total number of subscribers of Uninor, whose 22 licences stand cancelled following a Supreme Court order covering 122 licenses, stood at 106.38 million.

The apex court has ordered cancellation of 122 telecom licences issued in 2008 affecting 7 firms. Uninor, a joint venture between Norway’s Telenor and India’s Unitech, would be the worst affected firm if asked to shut shop in India.

Idea Cellular added 1.75 million subscribers to take its subscriber count to over 108 million.

Bharti Airtel added 1.3 million customers, taking its subscriber base to 176.95 million while Reliance Communications added 949,271 users, increasing its subscriber count to 151.

State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) added 874,756 subscribers to go up to 97.64 million users while Vodafone added 855,349 customers to take its user base to 148.6 million.

According to the data, the broadband subscriber base grew 0.90 percent from 13.30 million in December to 13.42 million in January. However, the wireline segment declined marginally from 32.69 million in December to 32.39 million in January.