India now has 858.4 million mobile phone subscribers

New Delhi: India now has 858.4 million mobile phone subscribers, with 6.67 million connections added in July, according to official data released Friday.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said the wireless user base grew 0.78 percent, from 581.7 million in June.

Wireless subscription in urban areas increased from 562.12 million in June 2011 to 565.71 million at the end of July and rural subscription increased from 289.57 million to 292.65 million during the same period.

Overall teledensity in India reached 71.59.

However, of the total 858.4 million wireless subscribers in June, only 601.73 million were active subscribers on the date of peak visitor location register (VLR) - a temporary database of the subscribers who have roamed into the particular area which it serves.

Each base station in the network is served by exactly one VLR, hence a subscriber cannot be present in more than one VLR at a time.

The growth in this category was led by Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications, which added 1.52 million users to take its subscriber base to 144.79 million users.

Bharti Airtel followed next with an addition of 1.5 million new subscribers, taking its subscriber base to 170.7 million.

Vodafone added 1.49 million subscribers to take its total number of customers to 143 million, while state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited added 1.42 million subscribers to take its total subscribers base to 95.15 million subscribers.

Uninor added 1.1 million subscribers to have 27.39 million subscribers while Idea Cellular added 1 million subscribers increasing its subscribers count to have 96.1 million.

According to the data, the broadband subscriber base grew 1.46 percent from 12.32 million in June 2011 to 12.5 million in July 2011.

However, the wireline segment declined marginally from 34.29 million in June to 34.18 million at the end of July.

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