India Wireless Telecom Market: August 2013

Maharashtra is leading driven by higher proportion of active users while Airtel is at pole

Source: TRAI

India’s active mobile subscriber base increased to 735.88 million in August 2013 from 731.40 million in July 2013 …

·     Indian wireless telecom market ends August 2013 with subscriber base of 876.72 million, addition of 1.84 million, monthly growth rate of 0.21%

·       Overall mobile teledensity stands at 71.21% (Urban:  139.65%, Rural: 41.05%)

·       Urban to rural subscriber ratio is 59.98% to 40.02%

·       Rural market expanded by 1.79 million mobile subscribers at a monthly growth rate of

0.51% while urban subscriber base increased 0.05 million, growth of 0.01%

·    According to VLR data, India had 735.88 million active mobile subscribers. Hence, actual wireless teledensity in India is 59.77% by August 2013

·      In August 2013, about 2.37 million subscribers submitted Mobile Number Portability (MNP) requests which is about 0.27% of total mobile subscriber base in India

Bharti Airtel leads with 24.8% share as market continues to focus on active subscriber base ….

·       Bharti Airtel maintains its leadership position with 24.8% market share in India

·       Idea has largest proportion of active mobile users at 97.80% followed by Vodafone (95.94%) and Bharti Airtel (95.05%)

·   State-owned BSNL+MTNL with only 55.85% of active mobile subscriber base is certainly struggling in highly competitive and dynamic market environment raising lot of concerns about their future

·     While Tata (68.36%), Aircel (63.84%) and Unitech (69.02%) are way behind leading pack in terms of active user proportion raising doubts about long term sustainability of their business model

·     Aircel (0.87 million), Bharti (0.83 million) and Idea (0.75 million) led in terms of net subscriber additions during August 2013 while Tata (-0.37 million) and Unitech (-0.50 million) were worst performers

·     Top 5 players in Indian wireless telecom industry accounts for 84.4% market share in terms of active subscriber base

Maharashtra holds top position …

·    Maharashtra with 61.62 million active mobile users is leading followed by U.P. (East) with 60.45 million active mobile subscribers

·    With 89.82% of active subscribers, Maharashtra is the most active circle while Tamil Nadu with 73.47% active users is least active

·    Andhra Pradesh (55.30 million) is third followed by Tamil Nadu (53.90 million) at fourth. Bihar with 50.73 million active mobile subscribers is the 5^th largest market wireless telecom market in India