Telecom Subscription Data: Urban Down, Rural Up. Wireless Teledensity reaches 74.15%

Total Wireless subscriber base has increased from 884.37 Million in November 2011 to 893.84 Million at the end of December 2011, registering a growth of 1.07%.

– The share of Urban Subscriber has marginally decreased from 65.73% to 65.59% where as share of Rural Subscribers has marginally increased from 34.27% to 34.41%. The overall wireless Tele density in India reaches 74.15.

– Broadband subscription reached  13.30 Million in December-2011 from 13.13 Million in Novomber-2011.

Wireless subscription in Urban Areas increased from 581.33 million in November 2011 to 586.26 million at the end of December 2011. The subscription in Rural Areas increased from 303.04 million to 307.59 million during the same period. This shows higher growth in Rural Subscription (1.50%) than Urban Subscription (0.85%).

In terms of market share, private operators hold 88.54% of the wireless market share where as BSNL and MTNL, two PSU operators hold only 11.46% market share.

Out of the total  893.84 Million subscribers,  646.77 Million were active on the date of Peak VLR* for the month of December 2011 (i.e. 72.36% active).

MNP

• By the end of December 2011 about 292.40 lakh subscribers have submitted their requests to different service providers for  porting their mobile number.
• Gujarat leads in Zone-1 and Karnataka in Zone-2.

Summary

* Visitor Location Register (VLR) is a temporary database of the 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.