A report released by the Telecom Authority of India has revealed that there has been a 0.34 percent growth in the number of mobile subscribers in India in June. In the month of May also, the mobile phone industry had seen an increase of 0.34 percent subscribers as compared to the month before.
At the end of May 2013, the total number of customers who owned a mobile phone stood at 903.09 millions, which was the second time ever that it hit the 90 crore milestone. By the time the month of June came to an end, the number had leaped ahead by 0.34 percent to 900.05 million. To be precise, the mobile phone industry gained a total of 31.6 lakh new customers.
But the boom in the mobile industry has resulted in a decline in users interested in landline phones. It has been found that landline subscribers saw a sharp decrease as 1.2 lakh Indians stopped using it in June. Also, a decline of 0.19 percent was recorded in the urban customer base, whereas in the rural areas it grew by 0.19 percent.
Furthermore, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications recorded an addition of 12.63, 12.09 and 8.33 lakh new customers in June, respectively. Aircel and Vodafone follow with 6.11 and 3.47 lakh new users. As for Videocon and Uninor, they both had 1.32 and 2.95 lakh new subscribers, correspondingly. Apart from this, a marginal increase can be seen in broadband connections as it jumped to 1.519 crore in June from 1.513 crore in May.
TRAI even went on to disclose that in the said month in 2013, as many as 2.03 million customers opted for number portability to change their service providers.