Telecom regulator Trai today released the 'Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report,' for the quarter ended on September 30, 2017. In the report, Trai said that Indian telecom subscribers consumed 5,430,046 TB of wireless data between July 1, 2017, to September 30, 2017. Furthermore, it is also revealed that telephone subscriber base in India decreased by 0.34% when compared to the quarter ended on June 30, 2017.
The number of telephone subscribers in India decreased from 1,210.84 million at the end of June 2017 to 1,206.71 million at the end of September 2017, registering a growth of -0.34% over the previous quarter. However, this reflects year-on-year (Y-O-Y) positive growth of 12.33% over the same quarter of last year.
Subscribers in Urban areas increased from 700.96 million to 704.86 million during the same period. However, rural subscription declined from 509.88 million to 501.82 million, a massive decline nonetheless. This means that the share of rural subscription declined from 42.11% at the end of June 2017 to 41.59% at the end of September 2017.
Having said that, the net subscriber base in India declined by 3.80 million subscribers during the quarter. The total wireless base (GSM+CDMA) subscriber base declined from 1,186.84 million to 1,183.04 million. However, the year-on-year (Y-O-Y) growth rate of wireless subscribers for September 2017 is 12.70%.
At the same time, the total number of internet subscribers declined from 431.21 million to 429.23 million during the quarter, a quarterly growth rate of -0.46%. Out of 429.23 million, wired internet subscribers are 21.35 million, and wireless internet subscribers are 407.88 million.
The report also highlighted that Monthly Average Revenue per User (ARPU) for GSM service (including LTE) increased by 5.42%, from Rs 80 in June 2017 to Rs 84 in September 2017. However, monthly ARPU for GSM service (including LTE) declined by 30.65% on YoY in the quarter. Prepaid ARPU for GSM service per month increased from Rs 65 to Rs 71 in the quarter ended September 2017. However, the postpaid ARPU per month also declined from Rs 389 in the quarter ended June 2017 to Rs 361 in the quarter ended September 2017.
Lastly, Trai in the report revealed that the average data usage per subscriber per month- GSM (2G+3G+4G) is 1610MB, and the average data usage per subscriber per month - CDMA is 454MB.
