Telecom subscribers in India reach 1.20 bn in January 2019: TRAI

New Delhi: Telecom regulator TRAI on Wednesday said that the number of telephone subscribers in India showed a monthly growth rate of 0.49 %. It increased from 1,197.87 million at the end of December 2018 to 1,203.77 million (1.20 billion) at the end of January 2019, the TRAI data found.

The urban subscription increased from 666.28 million at the end of December 2018 to 672.91 million at the end of January 2019.

However, TRAI said that the rural subscription declined from 531.59 million to 530.86 million during the same period. The monthly growth rates of urban and rural subscription were 1.00% and -0.14% respectively during the month of January 2019.

The overall Tele-density in India increased from 91.45 at the end of December 2018 to 91.82 at the end of January 2019.

The Urban Tele-density increased from 159.98 at the end of December 2018 to 161.34 at the end of January 2019, however Rural Tele-density declined from 59.50 at the end of December 2018 to 59.38 at the end of January 2019.

The share of urban and rural subscribers in total number of telephone subscribers at the end of January 2019 was 55.90% and 44.10% respectively.

The top five Wireless Broadband Service providers for January this year were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (289.44 million), Vodafone Idea (109.84 million), Bharti Airtel (107.96 million), BSNL (11.64 million) and Tata Teleservices (1.79 million), TRAI data said.

In the month of January, 2019, 5.84 million subscribers submitted their requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP). With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 411.98 million at the end of December 2018 to 417.82 million at the end of January 2019, since implementation of MNP.