Comments
The number of telephone subscribers in India declined from 1,210.84 million at the end of June to 1,206.71 million at the end of September, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on Thursday.
The gross revenue (GR) and adjusted gross revenue (AGR) of the telecom service sector for the September quarter was ₹66,362 crore and ₹41,669 crore, respectively. While GR increased 2.27 per cent, AGR declined 4.75 per cent in the September quarter compared with the previous quarter, the authority said.
According to the regulator’s latest report on quarterly performance indicators, while Bharti Airtel, BSNL and Reliance Jio Infocomm gained customers, Vodafone and Idea Cellular lost customers during the quarter.
Airtel’s customer base as of June-end was 284.53 million, which went up to around 286 million in September. Reliance Jio’s customer base rose more than 12 per cent quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) to around 139 million in September, from 123.36 million in the previous quarter.
Similarly, BSNL’s customer base rose from 117.37 million in June to 118.6 million in September, TRAI said in its ‘Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator’ report.
However, Vodafone’s customer base declined 2 per cent QoQ to 207.6 million in September compared with 212 million as of June-end this year. Idea’s customer base also came down to 190 million in September as against 196 million in June.
“Reliance Jio Infocom recorded the highest net addition of 15.25 million subscribers, and Reliance Communications Group showed the maximum decline of 9.19 million subscribers during the September quarter,” TRAI said. Idea continues to be the service provider with the highest proportion of rural subscribers (54.85 per cent), followed by Vodafone (54.78 per cent), it said.
Monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) for GSM service (including LTE) increased 5.42 per cent, from ₹80 in June quarter to ₹84 in the September quarter, TRAI said.
Prepaid ARPU for GSM service per month increased from ₹65 in the previous quarter to ₹71 in September. However, postpaid ARPU per month declined from ₹389 in June to ₹361 in September.
Rural wirelessTRAI also said rural wireless subscribers declined from 506.18 million at the end of June to 498.28 million at the end of September. However, urban wireless subscribers increased from 680.66 million to 684.77 million during the quarter.
The telecom regulator also said the total number of internet subscribers declined from 431.21 million at the end of June to 429.23 million at the end of September.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.