The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released the telecom subscription data as on December 2019. As per the reports received from 341 operators in the month of December, 2019, the number of broadband subscribers increased from 661.27 million at the end of November 2019 to 661.94 million at the end of December 2019 with a monthly growth rate of 0.10%.

Top five service providers constituted 98.98% market share of the total broadband subscribers at the end of December 2019. These service providers were Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (370.87 million), Bharti Airtel (140.40 million), Vodafone Idea (118.45 million), BSNL (23.96 million) and Atria Convergence (1.52 million).

As on 31st December, 2019, the top five Wired Broadband Service providers were BSNL (8.39 million), Bharti Airtel (2.42 million), Atria Convergence Technologies (1.52 million), Hathway Cable & Datacom (0.90 million) and Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (0.86 million).

As on 31 December 2019, the top five Wireless Broadband Service providers were Reliance Jio Infocom Ltd (370.02 million), Bharti Airtel (137.98 million), Vodafone Idea (118.43 million), BSNL (15.56 million) and MTNL (0.20 million).

There is, however, a decline in the number of telephone subscribers. It has declined from 1,175.88 million at the end of Nov-19 to 1,172.44 million at the end of Dec-19, thereby showing a monthly decline rate of 0.29%.

Urban telephone subscription declined from 665.99 million at the end of Nov-19 to 662.45 million at the end of Dec-19, and the rural subscription increased from 509.89 million to 509.99 million during the same period.

Wireline subscribers declined from 21.29 million at the end of Nov-19 to 21.00 million at the end of Dec-19. Net decline in the wireline subscriber base was 0.29 million with a monthly decline rate of 1.34%. The share of urban and rural subscribers in total wireline subscribers were 87.95% and 12.05% respectively at the end of Dec-19.

BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU access service providers, held 60.47% of the wireline market share as on 31 December, 2019. The Overall Wireline Tele-density declined from 1.61 at the end of Nov-19 to 1.59 at the end of Dec-19. Urban and Rural Wireline Tele-density were 4.36 and 0.28 respectively during the same period.