The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) today released monthly subscriber data for the month of November 2017. As per the data, the number of telephone subscribers in India declined from 1,201.72 million at the end of October 2017 to 1,185.88 million at the end of November 2017, thereby showing a monthly decline rate of 1.32%. Out of the overall new subscriber additions, Reliance Jio topped the chart yet again by adding a whopping 6.1 million customers, while the Anil Ambani-led telco RCom lost over 25 million subscribers.
The Urban subscription stood at 684.89 million, down from 697.54 million in October 2017, whereas the rural subscription also declined to 500.99 million from 504.19 million. The monthly decline rates of urban and rural subscription were 1.81% and 0.63% respectively during the month of November 2017, as per the latest Trai data.
Talking about the total wireless subscription data (GSM, CDMA & LTE), the industry saw a decline rate of 1.33% in November 2017 with subscriber base down to 1,162.47 million from 1,178.20 million. Also, it's revealed that as on November 30, 2017, the private telecom service providers held 90.44% market share of the wireless subscribers whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU service providers, had a market share of only 9.56%.
Bharti Airtel still has the highest overall market share in India with 24.91% share, which is followed by Vodafone India with 18.15% market share. Idea Cellular ended the month with 16.69% market share, while Reliance Jio secured 13.08% share in the country.
Talking about the individual subscribers added by each telecom operator, Reliance Jio leads the chart by adding over 6.1 million new customers, which is closely followed by Bharti Airtel with over 4.5 million new customers. Idea Cellular and Vodafone India added over 3.1 million and 2.7 million subscribers respectively. State-run telco BSNL added over 1 million new customers, which isn't a bad number at all.
Now, let's take a look at subscribers lost by telecom operators in November 2017. State-run telco MTNL lost over 5,000 subscribers, followed by Aircel and Telenor as they lost over 6.5 lakh and 1.2 million subscribers respectively. Tata Teleservices and Sistema lost over 2.2 million and 3.2 million subscribers respectively. And lastly, we have Reliance Communications which lost over a whopping 25 million subscribers which is understandable as the telco announced the shut down of its wireless services.
Thanks to the shutdown of services from RCom, Tata Teleservices, the Mobile Number Portability requests number received by Trai stood at 15.99 million, which is nearly three times the original requests it receives every month. In the month of December, there will be more number of subscribers applying for MNP service.
