Telecom Lead India: Indian telecom companies are likely to add 48.9 million new subscribers in FY2013-14.
Mobile operators’ focus on rural areas will fuel the new additions, according to Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).
Recent fall in subscriber base — nearly 36 million –is mainly due to implementation of mobile number portability (MNP) and the clean-up exercise by service providers.
The telecom user base is expected to increase in the next fiscal on the back of the rural thrust of the operators. During 2013-14, service providers are expected to add 48.9 million new subscribers. Most of these would be from rural areas.
While the urban areas are ‘over-penetrated’ with a tele- density of 159.5 per cent, that in rural areas is just 40.6 per cent. This indicates that these areas hold lot of opportunities for the operators to grow subscriber base.
However, in the current fiscal, it expects telcos to lose 35.9 million subscribers to 915.5 million. The fall would be partly because of the clean-up exercise by mobile service providers and also because of the exit of some who have lost licenses.
Since the implementation of MNP in January 2011, over 75 million subscribers have opted for transfer. Also, around 30 million users had their connections disconnected during July-October last year due to clean-up activity by service providers.
Meanwhile, China has 1.11 billion mobile phone users. Mobile phone users represent 80 percent of all phones users in the country.
The number of mobile phones owned by every 100 people reached 82.6 by the end of 2012.
Last year China crossed a billion mark and recorded 125.9 million new mobile phone users, among whom 104.38 million were 3G mobile phone users, bringing the total number of 3G users to 232.8 million.
The number of Internet users rose by 51 million to 564 million people, among whom 74.5 percent, or 420 million people, surf the Internet with their mobile phones.
The Internet penetration rate reached 42.1 percent by the end of last year, up 3.8 percentage points from a year earlier.
It is estimated that by 2015 China will have more than 800 million Internet users, one quarter of which will be from rural areas.
