The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,168.66 million in the third quarter of 2020 to 1,173.83 million in the last quarter of 2020, registering a growth rate of 0.44%. This reflects a Year-On-Year (Y-O-Y) growth rate of 0.12% over the same quarter of the last year.
According to the Indian regulator TRAI's Indian Telecom Services Performance Indicator Report, the overall Tele-density in India also increased to 86.38% as in Q4, 2020 from 86.22% in the previous quarter.
Telephone subscribers in Urban areas increased from 644.26 million in Q3 to 647.91 in Q4 and Urban Tele-density also increased from 138.25% to 138.34% during the same period.
Meanwhile, with a net increase of 5.19 million subscribers during the quarter, the total wireless subscriber base increased from 1,148.58 million at the end of Q3 to 1,153.77 million at the end of Q4, registering a growth rate of 0.45% over the previous quarter. On a Y-O-Y basis, wireless subscriptions also increased at the rate of 0.20% during the year.
Wireless Tele-density increased from 84.74% at the end of September to 84.90% at the end of December with a quarterly growth rate of 0.19%.
The total number of Internet subscribers in India increased from 776.45 million to 795.18 million at the end of Q4, registering a quarterly growth rate of 2.41%. Out of 795.18 million internet subscribers, the number of Wired Internet subscribers is 25.54 million and the number of Wireless Internet subscribers is 769.64 million.
A notable feature of the TRAI data is that the telecom sector recorded a near 4.2 % sequential growth in adjusted gross revenue (AGR) in the last quarter, helped by strong customer adds higher mobile recharge volumes and data consumption growth after easing of lockdown curbs.
