Broadband subscribers touch 118.34 crore mark in Jan end: TRAI

The number of broadband subscribers increased from 74.74 crore in December-end to 75.76 crore in January-end, marking a growth rate of 1.36 per cent, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on Wednesday.

The top five service providers constituted 98.84 per cent market share They are Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (41.29 crore), Bharti Airtel (18.46 crore), Vodafone Idea (12.27 crore), BSNL (2.66 crore) and Atria Convergence (18 lakh).

TRAI said the number of telephone subscribers increased from 117.38 crore at end of December 2020 to 118.34 crore at end of January 2021.

Urban telephone subscription increased from 64.79 crore in December to 65.32 crore in January. Rural subscription also increased from 52.59 crore to 53.01 crore during the same period.

In January, 76.3 lakh subscribers submitted their requests for mobile number portability (MNP). Since the implementation of MNP, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 54.46 crore at the end of December 2020 to 5.52 crore at the end of January 2021.

The overall teledensity increased from 86.38 to 87.01. Delhi service area has a maximum teledensity of 274.43 and the Bihar service area has a minimum teledensity of 53.11.

Total wireless subscribers increased from 115.37 crore in December 2020 to 116.34 crore by the end of January 2021, thereby registering a monthly growth rate of 0.84 per cent. The wireless teledensity increased from 84.9 at the end of December 2020 to 85.53 at the end of January 2021.

The private access service providers held 89.5 per cent market share of wireless subscribers while BSNL and MTNL had a market share of only 10.5 per cent.