Telecom subscriber base grows marginally

India's telecom subscriber base expanded marginally to reach 90.44 crore in July, as per TRAI data released Thursday.

The net addition of telecom subscribers was 13.7 lakh during the month, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said in a statement.

"The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 903.09 million at the end of June, 2013 to 904.46 million at the end of July 2013, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.15 percent," TRAI said.

The mobile phone subscriber base increased 0.17 percent in July to 87.48 crore, from 87.33 crore in June. Of the total base, 73.14 lakh customer were found to be active on a particular date in July.

The share of urban subscribers was 60.68 percent, while rural subscribers showed a declined from 39.60 percent to 39.32 percent in July.

The growth in mobile segment was lead by Aircel which replaced telecom major Bharti Airtel from the top slot in terms of net subscriber addition.

Aircel added 7.55 lakh new mobile customers in July taking its total customer base to 6.17 crore. Airtel slipped to third slot by adding 4.76 lakh new mobile customers.

Reliance followed Aircel by adding 5.12 lakh new customers.

Country's second largest mobile operators Vodafone lost maximum number of customers during the month. The company lost 6.1 lakh mobile customers in July and its customer base dipped to 15.44 crore from 15.5 crore in June.

New players Uninor and Videocon that operate in select states overtook Idea Cellular in new customers acquisition.

Uninor and Videocon added 4.63 lakh and 3.53 lakh new mobile customers while Idea's net subscriber addition stood at 3 lakh in July over its base in June.

Tata Teleservices, State-run MTNL and Sistema Shyam continued to lose mobile subscriber base in July. TTSL lost 5.62 lakh subscribers, MTNL 2.45 lakh and Sistema lost 1.84 lakh customers from their network.

BSNL and Loop showed recovery in July by adding 73,767 and 43,793 customers respectively in July. In June both these companies saw dip in their subscriber base.

As per the data provided by companies to TRAI, over a tenth of mobile subscriber base, 9.7 crore, opted to change their service providers using the Mobile Number Portability facility.

Wireline or Landline phone subscriber base declined by 0.5 percent from 2.97 crore at the end of June, to 2.95 crore at the end of July.

Broadband subscriber base grew by 0.33 percent on monthly basis to 1.52 crore at the end of July.