The total telephone subscriber base in the country reached 600 million at the end of February, according to a data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). The total number of mobile subscribers was close to 563 million and the remaining were wireline subscribers.
According to the Trai?s data, wireless subscription grew at 3.44% during February as the country added around 18 million subscribers taking the wireless tele-density at 47.91% at the end of the month. The country?s second largest GSM operator, Vodafone-Essar, made the highest net additions with a share of 16.46% in the net additions made by subscribers. Vodafone-Essar was followed by Bharti Airtel, which made the second highest net additions, at 15.49%.
The data shows out of the entire 563-million wireless subscribers, Bharti Airtel held the highest market share of 22.11%, while Reliance Communications stood second with a 17.63% of the total subscribers. Vodafone-Essar was a close third with 17.25% subscribers.
Meanwhile, the wireline segment continued to experience a decline with the subscription declining from 36.99 million in January to 36.96 million. The wireline tele-density in the country was just 3.14% at the end of the month. The two PSUs, BSNL and MTNL, held the chunk of 84.92% between them.
Category B circles made the highest additions in the wireless segment in February with 8.2 million of the total 18 million subscribers. The category A circles added the second highest subscribers with 5.6 million additions. Category C circles added 3.1 million mobile users and all the metros together constituted for 1.7 million of the total net additions. The yearly growth rate of the wireless subscription, too, showed a similar pattern with the category B circles growing at around 71% from February 2009.