NEW DELHI: The telecom subscriber base in India crossed 1.2 billion in May, according to sectoral regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).
The growth was led by 6.23 million net subscriber additions in the mobile services segment, but it was marginally impacted by decline of 0.14 million landline subscribers.
“The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,198.89 million at the end of April 2017 to 1,204.98 million at the end of May 2017, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.51 per cent,” Trai said in a report on Thursday.
Total wireless subscribers increased by 0.53 per cent to 1,180.82 million at the end of May from 1,174.60 million at the end of April.
Reliance Jio continued to lead the growth momentum with net addition of 4.7 million new customers accounting for about 75 per cent of overall net subscriber addition in the mobile services segment.
Jio was followed by Bharti Airtel, which added 2.09 million new customers, state-run BSNL (1.35 million), Vodafone (1.13 million) and Idea Cellular (0.19 million).
Aircel and Reliance Communications added 0.17 million net subscribers each. There were loss of subscribers by Tata Tele services (2.1 million), Telenor (1.32 million), Sistema Shyam (0.25 million) and MTNL (2,136) mitigated growth in the mobile services segment.
Out of the total wireless subscribers (1,180.82 million), 1,019.55 million wireless subscribers were found to be active in May.
The wireline or landline subscribers base declined to 24.16 million at the end of May, from 24.30 million at the end of April.
There were marginal net additions in landline connections by private players but it failed to arrest loss in wireline subscriber base due to huge decline in subscriber base of market leader BSNL.