India's mobile market continues to be the most dynamic worldwide thanks to Reliance Jio's entrance nine months ago. Mobile data traffic is booming, total subscriber count continues to rise, and rumours continue to swirl about consolidation of the 12 players into perhaps just a handful. Wireline subscription continue to drop rapidly at a monthly decline rate of 0.57% as mobile coverage, services, and offers proliferate.
New figures released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) last week show that total wireless subscribers (GSM, CDMA and LTE) increased from 1,174.60 million at the end of Apr-17 to 1,180.82 million at the end of May-17, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of 0.53%. Adding in fixed line subscribers, the number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,198.89 million at the end of April to 1,204.98 million at the end of May, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.51%. The monthly growth rate was stronger in rural areas (1.00% ) than in cities (0.15%), which indicates that finally many villages are getting connected. Rural tele-density increased from 57.02 at the end of April to 57.55 at the end of May, compared to urban tele-density of 172.28 at the end of May. Amazingly, Delhi now has a tele-density of 260%, while the state of Bihar in east India has a tele-density of 62%.
The Wireless Tele-density (%) in India increased from 91.34 at the end of April to 91.74 at the end of May. The Urban Wireless Tele-density increased slightly from 167.21 at the end of April to 167.24 at the end of May, and Rural Wireless Tele-density increased from 56.59 to 57.12 during the same period. The share of urban and rural wireless subscribers in total number of wireless subscribers was 57.30% and 42.70% respectively, at the end of May 2017.
In broadband, the number of subscribers increased from 284.23 million at the end of April to 291.61 million at the end of May with a monthly growth rate of 2.60%. The market is moving rapidly to mobile at the expense of DSL and fixed wireless. This breaks down as follows.
Broadband subscribers:
· Wired subscribers - 18.23 million, for a -0.14% monthly growth rate.
· Mobile devices users (phones and dongles) - 272.85 million, for a 2.80% monthly growth rate.
· Fixed wireless subscribers (WiFi, WiMax, point-to-point radio and VSAT) - 0.53 million, -3.04% monthly growth rate.
· The top five broadband service providers are Reliance Jio Infocom (117.34 million), Bharti Airtel (53.30 million), Vodafone (40.43 million), Idea Cellular (24.63 million) and BSNL (21.59 million). For wired broadband service providers, the top five were BSNL (9.80 million), Bharti Airtel (2.09 million), Atria Convergence Technologies (1.20 million), MTNL (0.99 million) and YOU Broadband (0.64 million).
TRAI monthly figures by mobile operator
