A third of SIM cards in India are inactive

Out of every ten people owning a subscriber identity module (SIM) card in Mumbai, four don’t use it at all, while countrywide, nearly a third of registered users are inactive.

Which beggars the question, how real is India’s telecom success story?

Data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) show that out of 811.59 million registered subscribers as of March 31, 2011, only 70.72% or 573.97 million are active.

Uninor plans rollout in 2 more northern circles-Report

Mobile phone company Uninor, majority owned by Norway's Telenor, which had put its expansion plans on hold as it was struggling with operations in Karnataka and Kerala, plans to launch services in two more northern circles in 2011, managing director Sigve Brekke told ET . Uninor on Wednesday reported an operating loss of $235 million on revenues of $103 million in the January-March period.

"We need to gradually bring down costs in the second half of the year (2011)," Brekke said. Globally, Telenor said, its profits more than doubled to 3 billion Norwegian Krone (around 2,536.8 crore) in the first quarter of 2011 boosted by Asian operations . India accounted for about 60% of the nine million new customers Telenor added globally during the three months ended March 2011.

Uninor had about 17.4 million customers in India as of March 2011. The company said it had added 1,100 new towers taking its total to 24,300. In India, Uninor's monthly average revenue per user is about $2.3 (. 102), compared with larger peers which have average revenue of around . 200. As the company begins to leverage economies of scale, Uninor expects its average revenue to improve. Brekke said Uninor's objective is to break even by the end of next year. Telenor entered India in 2009 when it bought a controlling stake in Unitech Wireless. Unitech Wireless is one of the companies that have been chargesheeted by the CBI in the 2G spectrum scam. 

Bharti airtel network collapses

Thousands of Bharti airtel subscribers in the city faced disruption in services in several areas, especially Central and East Delhi, on Thursday.

airtel subscribers across the city were not able to make or receive calls on their handsets due to network failure in the evening.

No official comments were available from the company and hence the reason for the network failure could not be ascertained. Customer helpline numbers also failed to elicit any response.

Bharti Airtel had 7.98 million in Delhi at the end of March 31, 2011, according to telecom regulator TRAI data.  

Mobile phone subscribers in India rises to 811.59 million

India’s mobile phone subscribers base has touched 811.59 million in March with the addition of 20.21 million connections, official data shows.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the wireless user base grew 2.55 percent, from 791.38 million in February.

While the share of urban subscribers declined to 66.30 percent from 66.36 percent, the share of rural subscribers increased from 33.64 percent to 33.70 percent, the report said Friday.

With this, the total number of telephone subscriber base touched 846.32 million, registering a growth of 2.43 percent.

Overall teledensity in India reached 70.89.

However, according to the report, of the total 811.59 million wireless subscribers in March, only 573.97 million subscribers were active subscribers on the date of peak visitor location register (VLR).

VLR is a temporary database of the subscribers who have roamed into the particular area, which it serves. Each base station in the network is served by exactly one VLR, hence a subscriber cannot be present in more than one VLR at a time.

The growth in this category was led by Vodafone, which added 3.65 million users to take its subscriber base to 134.57 million users.

Reliance Communications followed next with an addition of 3.54 million new subscribers, taking its subscriber base to 135.72 million.

Telecom giant Bharti airtel added 3.2 million subscribers to take its total number of customers to 162.2 million.

Idea Cellular added 2.7 million subscribers, increasing its subscribers count to 89.5 million while Uninor added 1.21 million subscribers to have 22.79 million subscribers.

According to the data, the broadband subscriber base grew 3.51 percent from 11.47 million in February to 11.87 million in March 2011. However, the wireline segment declined marginally from 34.87 million in February to 34.73 million at the end of March.