India's mobile subscriber base reaches 893.84 mn

The number of mobile phone subscribers in India rose to 893.84 million in December with Idea Cellular alone signing 2.39 million new subscribers, official data showed on Monday.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the wireless user base grew 1.07 percent with an addition of 9.47 million subscribers, from 884.37 million in November.

With this, the total number of telephone subscribers, including land line holders, touched 926.53 million, registering a growth of 1 percent.

Overall teledensity in India reached 76.86 percent.

However, of the total 893.84 million wireless subscribers, only 646.77 million subscribers were active subscribers on the date of peak visitor location register (VLR).

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.

The total number of subscribers of Idea Cellular stood at 106.38 million. Uninor added 2.13 million subscribers to take its subscribers count to 36.31 million.

Bhart Airtel added 9,60,143 customers taking its subscribers base to 175.65 million while Reliance Communications added 9,48,743 users increasing its subscribers count to 150.08 million susbscribers.

State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) added 7,50,467 and 34,143 users to have 96.76 million and 5.68 million users respectively.

According to the data, the broadband subscriber base grew 1.3 percent from 13.13 million in November to 13.30 million in December. However, the wireline segment declined marginally from 32.96 million in November to 32.69 million in December.