India's telecom subscriber base went down to 117.5 Crore toward the finish of January with smaller telecom operators losing majority of their clients, according to month to month Trai report released on Friday. "The numbers of telephone subscribers in India declined from 1,190.67 million toward the finish of December 2017 to 1,175.01 million toward the finish of January 2018, consequently demonstrating a month to month decay rate of 1.32 percent," the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said.
The mobile subscriber base declined to 115.19 crore toward the finish of January 2018 from 1,16.74 crore toward the finish of December 2017, down 1.33 percent. large telecom operators mutually included more than 1.26 crore new clients in January, of which 83 lakhs were included by Reliance Jio alone. The net expansion of Bharti Airtel was more than 15 lakh. It was trailed by Vodafone which included 12.82 lakh new clients, Idea Cellular 11.44 lakh and BSNL 3.96 lakh new clients.
RCom, which shut its cell phone calling services in December, lost 2.1 crore clients in January. Aircel, which has filed plea for bankruptcy, lost more than 34 lakh clients. It was trailed by Tata Teleservices which lost 19 lakh clients, Telenor - 16 lakh clients and state-run firm MTNL - 10,634 clients.
The wireline phone client base declined to 2.3 crore toward the finish of January 2018 from 2.32 crore toward the finish of December 2017. State-run BSNL lost 1.15 lakh landline clients. It was trailed by RCom which lost 41,720 wirelines clients, MTNL lost 10,907 clients, Quadrant - 2,765, Aircel - 2,219 and Tata Teleservices - 797. Bharti Airtel increased 5,925 new landline clients.
Broadband segment, saw development in January. The quantity of broadband subscribers expanded to 37.81 crore toward the finish of January this year, from 36.28 crore toward the finish of December 2017 a month to month development rate of 4.2 percent.
Mobile broadband segment dominated the development with 35.98 crore customers in January compard with 34.45 crores customers in December 2017. "Top five service providers constituted 94.52 percent of the overall industry of the aggregate broadband subscribers toward the finish of January 2018. These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (16.83 crore), Bharti Airtel (7.5 crore), Vodafone (5.48 crore), Idea Cellular (3.73 crore) and BSNL (2.18 crore)," the report said.
