According to the Indian telecom regulator TRAI, India added a significant 10.21 million “active” connections during the month of August 2014, while it added 5.59 million total connections during the month.

This probably means that several users who hadn’t been using their extra SIM card, began using it since the tariffs have gone up and the propensity to use an additional SIM for cheaper plans might have increased.

What’s also worth noticing is the dominance of the top three and the top four telecom operators in the country who tend to increase rates together: Airtel, Idea and Vodafone combined, account for 56.78% of the total mobile connections in India, and 62.9% of the active connections. With RCOM, the top four telcos account for 68.6% of the total mobile connections in India and 76.1% of the active connections.



The split between various telecom operators, in terms of active connections



Active Connection Base

The Active connection data represents peak VLR (Visitor Location Register) data for the month. Some stats:

– There were 807.30 million active connection in the month of August.

– Strangely, Idea apparently has 101.34% of its connections active – the highest among all telcos. TRAI says the percentage of active connections is more than 100% due to in-roamers i.e. subscribers from other operators roaming in Idea’s network.

– RCOM has the second highest active connection base of 97.45%, followed by Airtel at 95.79%.

In terms of the number of active connections, Airtel leads with 201.66 million connections followed by Vodafone at 162.73 million connections.

Mobile Operator Leaderboard For August 2014:

– Idea added 1.71 million connections, taking its connection base to 141.83 million.

– Vodafone added 1.22 million connections, taking its connection base to 172.49 million.

– In terms of active connections, Maharashtra leads with 93.53% active connections, followed by Madhya Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal. J & K has just 75.76% active connections, the lowest among all circles.

– UP (East) has the most number of connections, with 79.18 million connections (79,187,575 connections). Tamil Nadu is second with 77.59 million connections (77,591,095 connections) and Maharashtra is third with 73.94 million connections (73,947,243 connections).

– Bharti Airtel holds the maximum percentage market share of wireless connections at 22.78%, followed by Vodafone at 18.66%, Idea at 15.34%, Reliance at 11.86% and BSNL at 9.47%.

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Related:

– July 2014: 797.08M Active Mobile Connections In India; BSNL Loses 1.39M Connections

– June 2014: 795.61M Active Mobile Connections In India; BSNL Loses 2.14M Connections

– Jan 2014: 772.62M Active Mobile Connections In India; BSNL Loses 1.57M Connections

– Dec 2013: 762.39M Active Mobile Connections In India; BSNL Loses 2.04M Connections

– Nov 2013: 753.45M Active Mobile Connections In India

– Oct 2013: 744.24M Active Mobile Connections In India

– Sep 2013: 738.86M Active Mobile Connections In India; RCOM Loses 10.5M Connections

– August 2013: 735.91M Active Mobile Connections In India

– July 2013: India Has 15.24M Broadband, 731.39M Active Mobile Connections

– June 2013: India Has 15.19M Broadband, 731.44M Active Mobile Connections

– May 2013: India Has 15.13M Broadband, 727.92M Active Mobile Connections

– April 2013: India Has 15.09M Broadband Connections; 724.48M Active Mobile Base

– March 2013: India Has 15.05M Broadband Connections; 722.96M Active Mobile Base

– February 2013: India Has 15M Broadband Connections; 712.5M Active Mobile Connections