COAI Data: Bharti Airtel continues to hold top position in Feb

According to latest reports by Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), India's private telecom service providers have a total of 999.33 million subscribers this includes subscribers of Reliance Jio and MTNL figures as of December 2017, while Bharti Airtel Ltd continues to hold the top position, with 29.50 percent market share, adding another 41,73,908 subscribers during January, to take its total subscriber base to 295.79 million subscribers.

Airtel is closely followed by Vodafone India Ltd, which ended January with 217.06 million subscribers. This past month, Idea Cellular had the maximum number of subscriber additions, adding 4.42 million to bring its total subscribers to 202.06 million, COAI said.

Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI, said, "We are pleased to see growth yet again. For a sector currently burdened with poor financial health and hyper-competition, this is a positive development. Operators are adopting new communication technologies into their product and offering diversified services even beyond voice and data. The industry is constantly working and delivering progress as its contribution to the Government's Digital India programme. Consistent growth as seen this month is encouraging, and the industry will continue to ensure that connectivity reaches the farthest corners of the country."

Interview with Rajan S Mathews Director General of COAI

COAI said, with these tools, we can move towards a truly equitable and democratic nation. The telecom industry, therefore, deserves an urgent and immediate intervention to encourage policy and regulatory stability, and facilitate growth, innovation, and investment in the sector in view of the mounting financial debt and debilitating financial health of the industry.

The industry remains committed to working for a fully connected and digitally empowered India and, furthering the Prime Minister's vision of Digital India.

The report, which also provides mobile subscriber numbers for individual circles, showed that the UP (East) circle remained at the top with a total of 86.74million subscribers, while Maharashtra remained at second position with a total of 81.56 million mobile subscribers.

As we all know the sector has been undergoing massive consolidation and pressure following the entry of Mukesh Ambani-owed Reliance Jio Infocomm.