India Has Over 1 Billion Active Mobile Connections: TRAI

In terms of number, Airtel is in top with 340.59 million of active mobile connections, followed by Vodafone with 208.6 million connections

There were more than one billion active mobile connections in India in the month of August 2018, according to data release by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The data on active mobile connections denotes peak Visitor Location Register (VLR) data for the month.

There were 6.9 million active mobile connections added in the month of August this year, with Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Reliance Jio making up for 93% of the overall active mobile connections in the country, the data stated.

Airtel has highest active connections

Airtel has the highest among all the telecommunication companies, with 98.47% of the connections active on the company’s network. The second highest active connection base if of Vodafone with 92.93%, followed by 91.56% active connections of Idea, the data revealed.

However, TRAI said that there is a possibility of double or triple counting in the data, due to the acquisition of Tata Tele and Telenor customers by Airtel. The regulatory body said that the percentage of active users is over 100%, due to subscribers from other telecoms roaming on the network of Airtel.

This is likely that as per the present format of notifications, customers of Airtel, Telenor and Tata Tele are on roaming on each other’s network. This may explain about the more active connections of Airtel have compared to registered connections, it clarified.

In terms of number, Airtel is in top with 340.59 million of active mobile connections, followed by Vodafone with 208.6 million connections.

Jio added maximum connections

In the month of August, Reliance Jio has added the highest number of connections – 12.18 million, taking its total base to 239.23 million. Vodafone has added 1.14 million connections in the month, taking its overall connection base to 224.5 million. On the other hand, the number of connections added by Airtel was 1 million, taking its subscribers base to 345.9 million.