The total number of mobile phone users in the country fell 0.26 per cent to 904.23 million in October from 906.62 million a month ago.
“This decline is due to large-scale disconnections by some of the service providers,” said the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
During the month under review, the total number of telecom subscribers in the country also fell to 935.18 million from 937.70 million users, down 0.27 per cent.
switch over requests up
The requests for mobile number portability, a service that enables users to switch to other operators without changing their numbers, rose to 75.14 million as of October-end from 69.78 million as of September-end.
The total broadband user base in the country also rose to 14.81 million (14.68 million) as of October.
Bharti Airtel, the country’s largest operator by subscribers, added 4,91,570 new users, taking its total subscriber base to 186.41 million. Vodafone India added 4,80,336 new subscribers, increasing its total base to 153.14 million.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd added 3,57,148 users and Idea Cellular added 2,39,348 new users. BSNL had a total of 99.99 million users, while that of Idea stood at 115.70 million.
Tata Teleservices lost more than 1.6 million users and Reliance Communications 844,735 users during the month, while Videocon (59,151) and Loop Mobile (47,379) reported erosion in their subscriber base.
The country’s wireline subscriber base declined to 30.95 million (from 31.08 million as of September 2012) at the end of October.