India mobile user base at 104 crore; BSNL regains fifth rank

New Delhi: India’s mobile user base grew marginally to 1,035.12 million (103.5 crore) at the end of June this year, with state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) regaining a spot among the top five players.

Total telecom customer base (wireless and wireline) at the end of June stood at 1,059.86 million, up from 1,058.03 million at the end of May 2016, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.17%, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said on Friday.

With this, overall tele-density in India increased to 83.20 from 83.14 at the end of May, it said in its monthly report for June, 2016.

The Trai said wireless or mobile subscriber base increased by 0.19% from 1,033.16 million at the end of May to 1,035.12 million in June. Wireline subscriber base, on the other hand, declined further to 24.74 million in June from 24.87 million in the previous month.

Bharti Airtel Ltd led the growth tally with a net addition of 1.4 million new mobile customers, taking its total subscriber base to 255.73 million.

State-run BSNL had the second highest addition of 1.3 million customers, taking its total mobile user base to 89.54 million. With this, BSNL pipped Aircel to become the fifth largest mobile services company in the country, a position it lost in April 2015.

Aircel added 0.67 million new wireless subscribers, taking its total mobile customer base to 88.93 million. While Vodafone added 0.7 million customers to take its mobile user base to 199.38 million, Idea Cellular’s user base rose to 176.23 million with addition of 0.68 million new users.

The number of broadband subscribers increased to 159.80 million at the end of June from 159.76 million in May. Of these, 142.06 million were mobile devices users (phones and dongles), while 17.16 million were wired subscribers and 0.54 million used fixed wireless.