India's broadband subscriber list increased marginally in December 2024 at 944.96 million as compared to the previous month at 944.76 million, as per the latest report issued by the Ministry of Communications.
This implies a moderate rate of growth on a monthly basis at 0.02 percent. The major broadband service providers, the top five of which are shown, retained their monopoly over the market as a combined percentage of all the broadband connections made up by both wire-based and wireless consumers amounted to 98.40 percent.
At the urban end, telephones were also witnessing an upturn with their December figures at 663.37 million compared to November at 660.62 million.
The net addition of 3.50 million urban subscribers translated into a monthly growth rate of 0.53 percent. Nationwide, the total telephone subscriber base was 1,189.92 million as of the end of December, representing a net addition of 2.78 million users.
Tele-density, or the percentage of phone connections per 100 people, reached 84.45 percent in December, from 81.67 percent in November. The tele-density of urban areas went up to 131.50 percent, whereas rural tele-density improved marginally to 58.22 percent, according to the Ministry figures.
In contrast, mobile number portability (MNP) continued to record high demand with 13.85 million users requesting MNP in December.
This took the cumulative number of MNP requests to 1,079.19 million since the facility became operational. The number of active wireless subscribers, on the basis of peak visitor location register (VLR) counts, was 1,060.34 million in December 2024.
Also, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data showed that in October 2024, around 13.45 million subscribers sought MNP, driving the total value of MNP requests from 1,039.11 million at the close of September to 1,052.56 million in October.
Subscriber strength in the wireline segment also increased from 36.93 million in September to 37.79 million by the end of October as per government statistics.
As of October 31, the public sector telecom operators MTNL, BSNL, and APSFL together had a combined wireline market share of 23.29 percent.
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