Broadband subscribers stand at 944.04 million in Feb, tele-density up: TRAI

New Delhi, April 24 (IANS) The total broadband subscribers stood at 944.04 million at the end of February, as per the information received from 1,189 operators, the government said on Thursday.

In the month of February, 12.06 million subscribers submitted their requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP). With this, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 1,093.33 million at the end of January to 1,105.39 million at the end of February, since implementation of MNP, according to the TRAI data.

The private access service providers held 92.03 per cent market share of the wireless (mobile) subscribers, whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU access service providers, had a market share of only 7.97 per cent.

The number of total telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,192.03 million to 1,197.23 million in February, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of 0.42 per cent.

Urban telephone subscription increased from 663.83 million to 667.93 million and the rural subscription also increased from 528.20 million to 529.31 million during the same period.

The overall tele-density in India increased from 84.54 per cent at the end of January to 84.85 per cent at the end of February.

The urban tele-density increased from 131.40 per cent at the end of January to 132.01 per cent at the end of February and rural tele-density also increased from 58.38 per cent to 58.48 per cent during the same period.

The share of urban and rural subscribers in total number of telephone subscribers at the end of February were 55.79 per cent and 44.21 per cent, respectively.

Number of machine-to-machine (M2M) cellular mobile connections increased from 63.09 million at the end of January to 64.71 million at the end of February.

Bharti Airtel Limited has the highest number of M2M cellular mobile connections 33.86 million with a market share of 52.33 per cent, followed by Vodafone idea Limited, according to the TRAI data.

--IANS

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