The mobile subscriber base in the country which for the last few months has shown downward trend has further declined in January 2013. According to the latest figures released by the regulator TRAI, the mobile user base decreased from 864.72 million in December 2012 to 862.62 million at the end of January 2013, registering a monthly growth of –0.24%.

TRAi has attributed this to the large scale disconnections of inactive SIMs by some of the service providers.

The share of urban wireless subscribers has decreased from 61.65% to 61.31% where as share of rural wireless subscribers has increased from 38.35% to 38.69%. The overall wireless Teledensity in India has reached 70.57.

Wireless subscription in urban areas decreased from 533.12 million in December 2012 to 528.88 million at the end of January 2013. The wireless subscription in rural areas increased from 331.60 million to 333.74 million during the same period. The urban wireless Teledensity has decreased from 143.48 to 142.10 and rural Teledensity has increased from 39.04 to 39.26.

The latest data suggest that Tata Teleservices was the biggest loser with with 1.87 million users. Its subscribers base now stands at 67.68 million at the end of January 2013. While Aircel lost  1.77 million subscribers, Uninor’s user base has been reduced to 40.11 million losing 1.40 million users. Aircel’s subscription has shrunk to 61.57 million. Videocon and Sistema Shyam Teleservices lost 1.38 million and over 520,000 million subscribers, respectively.

Airtel and Idea Cellular have however defied the trend who added 2.28 million and 2.45 million subscribers respectively.

State run BSNL added 0.31 million and Vodafone added 0.22 million new subscribers and their user base now stands at 100.24 million and 147.70 million, respectively.

Overall, the country again witnessed the number of telephone subscribers in India going down to 893.15 million at the end of January, 2013 from 895.51 million at the end of December 2012, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of -0.26%. The share of urban subscribers has declined to 61.87% from 62.20% whereas share of rural subscribers has increased to 38.13% in the month of January 2013. With this, the overall Teledensity in India decreased to 73.07 at the end of January, 2013 from 73.34 of the previous month.

There is no good news from the Wireline segment either whee subscriber base declined from 30.79 million at the end of December 2012 to 30.52 Million at the end of January 2013. Net reduction in wireline subscriber base was 0.27 million.

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