India Wireless Telecom Market: September 2015

UP (East) is the largest wireless telecom market in India, while Airtel holds Pole position

Source: TRAI

India’s active mobile subscriber base increased to 893.74 million in September 2015 …

· Indian wireless telecom market ends September 2015 with subscriber base of 996.66 million, addition of 8.49 million, monthly growth rate of 0.86%

· Overall mobile teledensity stands at 78.93% (Urban: 147.35%, Rural: 48.11%)

· Urban to rural subscriber ratio is 57.98% to 42.02%

· Rural market expanded by 0.68 million mobile subscribers at a monthly growth rate of

0.16% while urban subscriber base increased 7.81 million, growth of 1.37%

· According to VLR data, India had 893.73 million active mobile subscribers. Hence, actual wireless teledensity in India is 71.10% by September 2015

· In September 2015, about 4.17 million subscribers submitted Mobile Number Portability (MNP) requests which is about 0.42% of total mobile subscriber base in India

Bharti Airtel leads with 25.5% share as Vodafone and Idea fighting close battle for 2^nd position….

· Bharti Airtel maintains its leadership position with 25.5% market share in India while Vodafone (19.8%) and Idea (19.1%) are fighting close battle for second position

· Idea has largest proportion of active mobile users at 102.57% followed by Reliance (97.06%), Bharti Airtel (96.95%) and Vodafone (94.15%)

· State-owned BSNL+MTNL with only 70.83% of active mobile subscriber base is certainly struggling in highly competitive and dynamic market environment. Strong actions to restructure needed to revive BSNL and MTNL

· Aircel displaced BSNL to become 5^th largest mobile service provider in India

· Although Tata (76.34%) and Aircel (70.11%) are way behind leading pack in terms of active user proportion raising doubts about long term sustainability of their business model in a highly competitive market

· Idea (2.63 million), Bharti (2.22 million) and Vodafone (1.59 million) led in terms of net subscriber additions during December 2014 while Tata with just 2,719 new subscribers performed poorly

· Top 5 players in Indian wireless telecom industry accounts for 83.0% market share in terms of active subscriber base

U.P. (East) leads followed by Maharashtra as largest telecom circle…

· U.P. (East) with 75.39 million active mobile users is leading followed by Maharashtra with 74.49 million active mobile subscribers

· With 94.07% of active subscribers, Maharashtra is the most active circle while Tamil Nadu with 83.20% active users is least active

· Bihar (66.10 million) is third followed by Tamil Nadu (66.00 million) at fourth. Andhra Pradesh with 65.86 million active mobile subscribers is the 5^th largest market wireless telecom market in India