India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority, the TRAI has in a new release announced interesting statistics pertaining to the telecom industry in India. Accoring to TRAI, at the end of April 2012, the total number of wireless and wireline subscribers stood at 952.91 million. Of these, wireless subscriptions alone account for 921.02 million people. At the current growth rates, India is gradually inching towards becoming the second country after China to cross the 1 billion mark when it comes to mobile phone subscriptions.
The report however states that India is shedding its phenomenal growth rate it used to have when it comes to mobile subscriptions. In fact, the month on month growth rate from the period of March 2012 to April 2012 was just 0.16%. One encouraging factor however is the increase of rural subscribers which saw their share reach 35.05 %. Urban subscribers however declined to 64.95% from 65.23%. In terms of sheer numbers, the subscription in urban areas declined from 620.53 million in March, 2012 to 618.92 million at the end of April, 2012. The story was different in rural areas where the subscription count increased from 330.82 million to 334.00 million during the same period.
The overall Tele-density in India has reached 78.71% at the end of April, 2012. This is marginally up from the 78.66% recorded in March 2012.
The report also states that a total of 45.89 million mobile number porting requests were received by the end of April 2012. This was up from the figure of 41.88 million in March thereby making it clear that MNP is being extensively used by consumers across the spectrum. In the month of April 2012 alone, there were 4.01 million requests for MNP.
