The total number of wireless subscribers increased from 1,165.49 million at the end of March to 1,166.96 million at the end of April, registering a monthly growth rate of 0.13 percent. Reliance Jio led the growth in the wireless segment by adding 2.68 million net new subscribers, taking its total customer base to 472.42 million.
According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI’s) latest monthly data, while Bharti Airtel added 7.52 lakh customers, thereby its subscriber base growing to 267.57 million in April, there was a huge loss of 1.23 million subscribers by State-owned operator BSNL and 7.35 lakh customers by Vodafone-Idea that mitigated the growth pace of the wireless segment.
Overall, the telecom subscriber base in the country has crossed the 1.2 billion user mark for the second time, reaching base of 1,201.22 million at the end of April, which an increase of 0.16 per cent from 1,199.28 million in March this year.
The wireline of the fixed line subscribers increased to 34.26 million in April from 33.79 million in March, the TRAI report highlighted.
The growth in the wireline segment was also led by Reliance Jio with addition of around 3.56 lakh new customers, followed by Airtel that added around 1.19 lakh new subscribers and Vodafone Idea with 8,152 subscribers, it said.
The overall wireline tele-density in India increased from 2.41 per cent at the end of March to 2.45 per cent at the end of April. Urban and rural wireline teledensity were 6.29 per cent and 0.32 per cent, respectively, during the same period, it said.
TRAI also said that out of the total 1,166.96 million wireless subscribers, 1057.66 million were active at the peak in April. The proportion of active wireless subscribers was around 90.63 per cent of the total wireless subscriber base.
A total of 11.07 million requests were also received for mobile number portability (MNP) during April, and out of that, 6.33 million new requests were received from Zone-I and Zone-II and 4.74 million, respectively. The cumulative MNP requests increased from 962.53 million at the end of March to 973.60 million at the end of April, since the implementation of MNP (2010).