India Has 449 Million GPRS – CDMA – 3G Mobile Internet Subscribers, Bharti Airtel Leads

According to the latest report by telecom regulator – TRAI, India has 448.89. million active Mobile Internet Subscribers (GPRS/2G/3G/CDMA-Data) as on 31st March 2012.

India has total 929.37 million wireless/mobile (GSM + CDMA) subscribers at the end of May-2012 and 48.84% of total mobile subscribers base are capable of Accessing GPRS (2G/3G) Data Services/CDMA Internet as per latest report by TRAI.

India’s largest mobile service provider Bharti Airtel has maintained pole position among Indian mobile operators with 178.93 million active GPRS / EDGE / 3G data subscribers. While National Telecom Backbone and state run telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) comes in second with 81.79 million and Vodafone has 3rd position with73.07 million mobile Internet subscribers.

Here are the mobile service operator-wise details :

Mobile Operators	Mobile Internet Subscribers (GPRS EDGE /3G / CDMA / EVDO) as on 31^st March, 2012 (in Millions)
Aircel	16.59
Bharti Airtel	178.93
Loop Mobile	3.26 *( Total subscriber base with pre-activated data service as reported to TRAI)**
BSNL	81.79 (GSM)
BSNL	0.02 (CDMA)
HFCL (Videocon Punjab)	1.30
Vodafone India	73.07
Idea Cellular	18.79
MTNL	4.68 (GSM)
MTNL	0.04 (CDMA)
Reliance Telecom	4.39
Reliance Communications (Rcom	6.19 (CDMA)
Reliance Communications (Rcom	4.71 (GSM)
MTS India(Sistima)	1.54
TATA Docomo	2.79 (CDMA)
TATA Docomo	2.06 (GSM)
S Tel	0.39
Uninor	*42.43 ( Total subscriber base with pre-activated data service as reported to TRAI)**
Etisalat DB (Cheer Mobile)	0.010
Videocon (Except Punjab)	5.95 *( Total subscriber base with pre-activated data service as reported to TRAI)**
Total	448.89
Note : The details of Etisalat, S-Tel and Loop (except Mumbai) have been taken of December, 2011

syam August 8, 2012 at 4:20 pm

@ANIL
sure daaaaaa…..

sumant August 7, 2012 at 9:19 pm

I don’t know why people go for airtel its sooo costly. go for tata docomo its very cheap and good also.
airtel —> 1gb Rs. 98
tata docomo ->2.5gb+600sms for just rs. 78
now choice is yours……..

Rajiv August 7, 2012 at 8:13 pm

in Delhi Airtel has best GPRS service compare to all operators

Nilanshu August 7, 2012 at 7:35 pm

I think that Reliance is the best telecome operator in India.its net is good recharge pack is good tower is good in Bihar specially in begusarai

Kapil August 3, 2012 at 11:37 pm

@biswajeet
speed is differs from area to area. I am talking about kbps(kilo bits per second) not KBps. The speed taken from mobilespeedtest.com.
Tata Docomo speed is 120-140kbps(16-24KBps) using loop mobile network from 2am to 11pm.

biswajeet August 3, 2012 at 6:07 pm

@Kapil
hey i am use all compny 2g gprs plan ,onlytata docomo give up 10 to 20 in day or 20 to 40 in night,
or other all nt give up 15 kbps

Amjath August 3, 2012 at 11:31 am

Looks like this is not a n apple to apple comparison.
When Airtel is having around 190 Mn subscribers in total, how can they have 178 Mn internet users?

This is total rubbish……different yardsticks

Bibhudutta August 3, 2012 at 2:03 am

BSNL is much better than AIRTEL in case of data service

Kapil August 3, 2012 at 12:29 am

Mobile internet speed in my area Navi Mumbai.
Loop mobile- 96-120kbps(currently using with rental plan rs. 28 for 2gb WAP) dont about edge plan not used,
Uninor-128-136kbps(used rs. 59 plan in the month Nov-Dec. uninor has problem of connect, need to try 20 to 30 times to get connected.
Vodafone: 65kbps-84kbps(used rs 17 plan)
Reliance: 2g 84kbps-120kbps
3g 156kbps-196kbps(using 2g plan)my bro currently using rs. 94 for 3gb.
Aircel: 53kbps in day and 128kbps in night(checked today).
idea: 64kbpsin the morning till 12am, 50 kbps till 6pm, 20kbps or no internet after that.
Airtel: 20kbps/60kbps(depends on the sim. I used 2airtel sim. in old sim 60-80kbps. And in new sim 20kbps.
Tata Docomo & Videocon: no internet or 10-20 kbps on tata own network. 140-160kbps on TD using loop mobile network and 120-140 kbps on videocon(Videocon survive on Loop mobile) 2am-11pm.

Saurabh August 2, 2012 at 7:44 pm

@Ashish, Airtel EDGE speed is too poor all over Haryana wherever I went. It remains 3-5 Kilo Bytes.

Here is the speed of all operators in my area last checked on July 25th, 2012-

1. Aircel- 16 Kilo Bytes Per Sec constant on Home Network i.e IND 807 and it remains the same whether you use it in morning or night and switching network to Tata Docomo gives 20-25 Kilo Bytes in morning and 15-18 during day time.

2. Airtel- 3-5 Kilo Bytes and in afternoon it is in Bytes only. So better activate 2G pack and switch network to Idea 3G to get 10 Kilo Bytes Constant or if you are lucky you will get 3G speed but not always. It does get capped most of the time.

3. BSNL- 6-8 Kilo Bytes. No 3G in my town so it is EDGE speed.

4. Idea- 16 Kilo Bytes constant on both EDGE and 3G. I don’t know what Idea has done due to which we are getting constant even on EDGE.

5. Reliance- 10-12 Kilo Bytes. Until May 28, we were getting 28-32 Kilo Bytes on consistent basis then company degraded speed and now capping at 128Kbps or 16KBps when I checked with MDMA.

6. Tata Docomo- 20-25 Kilo Bytes in morning till 11AM and 15-18 rest of time. Tata speed is good now from last 2 months. Before that speed was as low as 4 Kilo Bytes.

7. Videocon- 30-35 Kilo Bytes in morning until 9 AM after that reduces to 12-15.

8. Vodafone- 28 Kilo Bytes average in morning till 9 or 10AM and after that 23.

The speed mentioned here are calculated after continuously downloading 120 minutes of data and the Internet packs used were the ones with atleast 500MB usage. Speed differs area to area and it can even differ within 2Kms depending upon various factors.

Currently I’m active on Aircel’s 90 days unlimited pack of Rs.251 without any FUP which is valid till 10/10/2012. For surfing I use Aircel network because it is providing 128Kbps (16 Kilo Bytes) constant and ping time is best at 220ms and for downloading sometimes Aircel due to its consistency and sometimes Tata Docomo.

Aircel has really pace up the expansion of their own network in Haryana as I found 7 new cell sites while travelling. When I talked to company, they said they will cover 80 percent area in Haryana with their own network in next 18 months. There were also news in local newspapers few weeks back in which Aircel told that they will invest around 860 crores on network expansion in Haryana and Punjab circle. They also have 3G license in Punjab. So major part of this investment figure will go Punjab circle.

Aircel don’t have much customers in Haryana because their own network is present at few places only and nowhere in villages. Otherwise they have cheapest voice and 2G tariffs in Haryana, even cheaper than Videocon. But once they expand tariffs will increase.

Last month they were No.1 in June, 2012 GSM subscriber figures in Haryana circle with net additions of 43000+ customers while Airtel-Idea-Vodafone jointly added around 25000 customers in Haryana. So slowly they are picking up.

abhijith August 2, 2012 at 7:29 pm

Airtel Bsnl rocks . . Am happy with both . .

ashish August 2, 2012 at 6:57 pm

happy wid bsnl which keeps me connected every where in jnk specially in kargil n drass where airtel lags as airtel is only money minded not customer oriented.
BSNL EDGE rockzzzz

ANIL August 2, 2012 at 5:23 pm

AIRTEL FANS ASSOCIATION WILL BE LAUNCHED SOOONNN…………….
AIRTEL ROCKSSSSZZZZZ……..

aks August 2, 2012 at 5:17 pm

When it comes to GPRS/3G, BSNL is best

puneet sharma August 2, 2012 at 4:53 pm

airtel is money sucker company…

Ashish August 2, 2012 at 4:03 pm

Saurabh :
What the hell is going on? Airtel numbers has got some serious error. Airtel has a total of around 18 crore mobile customers and only 70 percent of them are active. So their active subscribers stands at around 12.6 crores. The figure here suggests that 95 percent of Airtel customers (As per June, 2012 GSM subscriber data) are active on data services. Only a fool can believe this.
Vodafone in it’s quarterly statement for quarter ending March, 2012 estimated their data subscriber at around 17 million. How they added 4X data subscriber in 4 months?
Few months back TRAI came up with a report which told that Internet is not even used by 15% of total population then how this figure came from.
My estimates is that telecom companies have around 20% of their total subscribers on data and rest are voice only customers.
Every mobile Internet customer has SIM of all companies. So this figure should be divided by atleast 10 and the real figure would be only 4.4 percent of mobile subscribers are accessing data.
Look I have 8 SIM cards of 8 different operators and I activate lowest pack of Rs.5 from time to time to check speed. I’m 1 customer but TRAI will take it as 8 and not 1. So you can yourself understand how these figures are false.
Airtel has also reported their zero rental customers who wrongly entered browser and opened a website. Zero rental is pre-activated. It doesn’t mean you have a data subscribers.

Can u tell me hows Idea EDGE speed…..

Sharat Sreenivas August 2, 2012 at 12:53 pm

Will the Data for Kerala be available?

Rajive Borde August 2, 2012 at 12:17 pm

So Airtel, BSNL and Vodafone having more instinctual subscribers using good handset with gprs service, baki sab bakwaas ?

Sanjay Bafna August 2, 2012 at 12:10 pm

zeeshan :

178 million. I think Airtel do not have 178 million total subscribers.

check GSM or Mobile Subscriber Base Reports to confirm

Sanjay Bafna August 2, 2012 at 12:08 pm

Saurabh :

Reports in ET tells Internet subscriber base at 22.86 million which seems to be true.

I don’t know from where TT has got these figures. It’s messed up everywhere.

That ET Report is NOT for GPRS/Wireless Internet Subscriber base. ET reports mention Wire-line Internet Subscriber base only which is 22.86 Million (Dial Up – Narrow Band and Broadband Internet) Read that report again

Nothing messed up on TT, Our Report is for GPRS/3G/CDMA Data service Subscriber base and it is accurate and correct as per TRAI Data.

Sanjay Bafna August 2, 2012 at 12:02 pm

pankaj :

uninor does not have 43 million subscribers and they have 43 million gprs users …lol
this data is not correct….i think as per my information TATA DOCOMO is leading with data users with reliance 2nd

Uninor, Loop and Videocon reported (to TRAI) that their total subscriber base using SIM card with pre-activated data service.

ARJUN CHANDRASHEKAR August 2, 2012 at 10:55 am

Airtel is always worst in GPRS, 3G is Not available in Indoors and COCO representatives are very Rude

pankaj August 2, 2012 at 10:53 am

uninor does not have 43 million subscribers and they have 43 million gprs users …lol
this data is not correct….i think as per my information TATA DOCOMO is leading with data users with reliance 2nd

Sathish August 2, 2012 at 10:42 am

Sorry. no comments on this.

I Can’t believe the above data.

Saurabh August 2, 2012 at 9:50 am

Reports in ET tells Internet subscriber base at 22.86 million which seems to be true.

I don’t know from where TT has got these figures. It’s messed up everywhere.

M.Viswanathan August 2, 2012 at 9:22 am

RCOM GPRS (GSM) is good on chennai compared to any other gprs speed. (Ambattur i got 26Kb/Sec compard to airtel 18kb/sec)

BITTU SINGH August 2, 2012 at 8:55 am

Mane :
Airtel has 18 cr customers and the report shows that they have 17cr active internet users.
Do all users have multimedia phones?
Gprs access is not possible without multimedia phones.
I have seen the customers using airtel sim cards with simple mobiles of nokia like nokia 1200, 1208 etc.

u mean u have seen more than 1 crore people using airtel with nokia 1200,1208 etc?

Jhupoo August 2, 2012 at 8:54 am

In our area BSNL haS full FULL TOWER but no gprs connection.
Reliance has zero tower.
Docomo no indoor connection.
AIRCEL WITH FULL TOWER 5DAYS OF MONTH WITH GOOD EDGE SPEED AND REST OF MONTH HORRIBLE.
Uninor hufff.
AIRTEL/vodafone have always best services but costly.

rahul solanki August 2, 2012 at 6:35 am

Airtel data service is worst.I roam around andhra pradesh,maharastra and rajasthan and i never got good gprs speed..So i think this data should be reviewed again.Best in gprs and data services is BSNL and IDEA

Mane August 2, 2012 at 4:12 am

Airtel has 18 cr customers and the report shows that they have 17cr active internet users.
Do all users have multimedia phones?
Gprs access is not possible without multimedia phones.
I have seen the customers using airtel sim cards with simple mobiles of nokia like nokia 1200, 1208 etc.

sajid khan August 1, 2012 at 11:51 pm

airtel leads in cheating…i don’t think that airtel is having good network than bsnl…bsnl leads in internet in india whether in wireless or in wireline…the only disadvantage in bsnl is their customer care staff and thet r not displayed on TVs and newspapers like airtel….

krishnendu August 1, 2012 at 11:49 pm

data card subscribers are included?

Sam From Kashmir August 1, 2012 at 11:32 pm

the figures is totally fraud airtel pays for that….. for No. 1 position in Media…..

VB August 1, 2012 at 11:14 pm

Saurabh :
Airtel has also reported their zero rental customers who wrongly entered browser and opened a website. Zero rental is pre-activated. It doesn’t mean you have a data subscribers.

I dont think so even ppl who have ever used 0 rental plan wud make that number. there is som serious error in that! Also Dont forget there stil exists ppl who dont have gprs enabled handset.

Airtel had 183.29 million GSM customers by april 2012
If these reports are correct then there is only 1 posibility. Airtel had counted subscribers with 0 rental activated! and the difference ie around 4 million ppl are old customers(no 0 rental preactivated) and customers who had deactivated even 0 rental plan

Kanchan August 1, 2012 at 10:51 pm

airtel could be only 78.93 million but not 178.93

Syam August 1, 2012 at 10:48 pm

Airtel is the telecome gaint in india and it also has got international operations. In india from early period onwards airtel concentrates on data services. It is the first operator who comes up with intelligent networks. Airtel also has got its own so many international internet gateways in india. Hence we can say proudly an INDIAN OPERATOR airtel got this much of internet subscribers. . .

Rahul August 1, 2012 at 10:30 pm

Airtel subscribers: 187 Million
Active Data Users: 178.93 Million

Good Joke

Sayan Chattopadhyay August 1, 2012 at 10:26 pm

happy with tata docomo internet.

biswajeet August 1, 2012 at 10:03 pm

airtel edge speed nt gud even day just 5 to 12 kbps,but docomo give 20 to 48 kbps

Prasad August 1, 2012 at 10:01 pm

Hi guys Airtel GPRS speed wise worest in Chennai , getting 2g gprs speed 5-7 kbps only

sunny August 1, 2012 at 9:42 pm

BSNL CDMA .02 M IS NOT CORRECT

Saurabh August 1, 2012 at 9:40 pm

What the hell is going on? Airtel numbers has got some serious error. Airtel has a total of around 18 crore mobile customers and only 70 percent of them are active. So their active subscribers stands at around 12.6 crores. The figure here suggests that 95 percent of Airtel customers (As per June, 2012 GSM subscriber data) are active on data services. Only a fool can believe this.

Vodafone in it’s quarterly statement for quarter ending March, 2012 estimated their data subscriber at around 17 million. How they added 4X data subscriber in 4 months?

Few months back TRAI came up with a report which told that Internet is not even used by 15% of total population then how this figure came from.

My estimates is that telecom companies have around 20% of their total subscribers on data and rest are voice only customers.

Every mobile Internet customer has SIM of all companies. So this figure should be divided by atleast 10 and the real figure would be only 4.4 percent of mobile subscribers are accessing data.

Look I have 8 SIM cards of 8 different operators and I activate lowest pack of Rs.5 from time to time to check speed. I’m 1 customer but TRAI will take it as 8 and not 1. So you can yourself understand how these figures are false.

Airtel has also reported their zero rental customers who wrongly entered browser and opened a website. Zero rental is pre-activated. It doesn’t mean you have a data subscribers.

sunny August 1, 2012 at 9:37 pm

HOW MANY CAN ACCESS AND HOW MANY ARE ACCESSING IT ,BOTH ARE DIFFERENT

Tushar Gaikwad August 1, 2012 at 9:21 pm

Yup…the figures for Airtel seem to be misleading….
It seems Airtel guys have put up a huge figure to show their lead

Ganesh Srinivasan August 1, 2012 at 8:55 pm

TRAI’s figures can’t be wrong – right from early days of the industry, they have focused on data collection and have been publishing stats regularly. In an industry like telecom the data can be collected electronically and hence with fair amount of accuracy – every detail is available in their data bases

gaurav August 1, 2012 at 8:54 pm

this serve is totally wrong…
docomo has more then 20 crore suscriber…and 1 more thing airterl is the worst operator in the whole world…uninor is better than airel…

Wanderer August 1, 2012 at 8:51 pm