Data from TRAI reveal that as of January, the active India mobile subscriber base increased to 918m, up 9% YoY, with share of active subscribers increasing by 200bps to 90% of reported 1,018m subscribers.
On an operator-wise basis, the top-3 operators accounted for the entire active subscriber additions. Airtel added 22m active subscribers, the highest in thesector, followed by Idea at 19m and Vodafone at 15m. Among the top-3 operators, Bharti Airtel saw a sharp YoY rise in active subscriber additions from 14m in 10MFY15 to 22m in 10MFY16.
A pickup in subscriber additions in urban areas, where penetration is already high at 148%, implies that subscribers in these areas are taking 3G/4G services as an additional/second connection. This is likely to drive up subscriber growth in the near term,however, lower rural penetration of ~50% currently will be thekey driver of subscriber growth over the medium term.
