Telecom user base declines for first time

For the first time ever, the country's telecom subscriber base in the country fell by over 20.61 million to 944.81 million in July, following large scale disconnections by some service providers. The subscriber base fell by 2.14 per cent from 965.52 million a month ago.

This also pulled down the overall tele-density, or telephones per 100 people, to 77.79 from the earlier 79.58.

The country's total wireless subscriber base decreased by 2.21 per cent from 934.09 million in June 2012 to 913.49 million at the end of July 2012. The overall wireless tele-density in India reached 75.21 from 76.99 earlier.

The biggest loss in user base came from Reliance Communications, with the company removing inactive customers from its user base. The total subscriber base of RCom declined to about 134 million in July from over 154 million in June.

This was followed by Tata Teleservices, Uninor, Videocon, Loop and MTNL. Tata Teleservices lost more than over 2.4 million wireless customers, Uninor lost 1 million subscribers, Videocon 0.41 million, Loop Mobile and state-run MTNL each lost around 0.15 million subscribers in July.

Bharti Airtel, the country's largest telecom service provider by subscriber base, added more than 1.5 million new customers, taking its total subscriber base to more than 188 million.