As per the subscriber addition data released by COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India) for the month of November 2017, Idea Cellular, Vodafone India, and Bharti Airtel have added a decent number of new customers, taking the overall telecom subscriber base to 975.4 Million. Idea Cellular added 3.2 million new customers, while Vodafone India and Bharti Airtel added 2.7 million and 4.34 million new customers during November 2017.
With the November 2017 subscriber addition, Bharti Airtel's overall subscriber base stood at 289.54 million subscribers. Airtel is followed by Vodafone India which ended November with 211.03 million subscribers, while Idea Cellular stood at 194.07 million subscribers at the end of the eleventh month of the year.
As per the data, India’s private telecom service providers have a total of 975.40 million subscribers. The data also includes the figures of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) by the end of October 2017 (Source: TRAI). Reliance Jio recently revealed that it has over 160 million subscribers, but as per Trai, the company has over 145 million subscribers at the end of October 2017.
The COAI report also showed mobile subscriber numbers for individual circles. UP (East) circle remained at the top with total 84.99 million subscribers, while Maharashtra remained at second position with a total of 81.50 million mobile subscribers.
Talking about the increase in the subscriber base, Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI, said, “The telecom industry is an enabler of comprehensive growth and an empowered society, where every individual gets a chance to partake in the economic growth of the country. The industry has ensured that Government’s Digital India programme reaches the farthest corners of the country and everyone reaps the benefit of new communication technologies. All the operators have significantly expanded their services across the country, and have begun heavily diversifying their services beyond voice & data for the consumer.”
Coming to other telecom operators, Aircel managed to lose only 10,000 subscribers in November 2017, while Telenor subscribers continued to port out to another network as the operator registered 1.25 million subscribers loss. Bharti Airtel is still the top telecom operator in the country with a market share of 29.68%. It's interesting to see how telecom operators perform in 2018.
