Bharti Airtel is leading the mobile subscriber base in rural India with 24.47 percent market share in the June 2013 quarter, TRAI said.
Airtel’s rural mobile market share increased from 23.99 percent in March quarter. Bharti Airtel, the number one telecom operator in India, had 85.9 million rural subscribers in June quarter.
Rural mobile market share of Vodafone India decreased to 23.93 percent from 24.02 percent during the period. Vodafone had 84.01 million mobile customers in rural India.
Idea Cellular is in the third position with 68.73 million rural mobile users. Its mobile market share in rural space increased to 19.58 percent from 19.21 percent.
Rural market share of BSNL, the state-run telecom service provider, decreased to 9.62 percent from 10.17 percent. BSNL had 40.23 million mobile users in rural India.
Reliance Communications had 30.14 million rural mobile users, according to the TRAI data. Reliance Communications increased its rural market share to 8.58 percent from 8.57 percent.
TRAI says the total rural wireless subscribers increased from 342.50 million in March 2013 to 351.10 million in June 2013.
Rural subscription increased at 2.51 percent in June quarter against the growth rate of 3.29 percent in March quarter of 2013.
On the other hand, urban subscription declined at 0.58 percent as against negative growth rate of 1.47 percent in the previous quarter. The share of rural wireless subscription increased from 39.47 percent to 40.20 percent in total wireless subscription in this quarter.
Himachal Pradesh has the highest Rural Teledensity of 75.50, followed by Tamil Nadu (68.86). Bihar continues to have the lowest Rural Teledensity of 27.87, followed by Assam (32.10).
