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.

11.1 mn new GSM subscribers added in April

Idea cellular was the biggest gainer adding 2.45 mn users into its kitty followed by Airtel with 2.41 mn additions.

Indian GSM telecom operators added 11.1 million subscribers to their kitty in April, according to the Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI). 

However, the figure is lower than the March figure, when 14.49 million subscribers were added by the operators. With this, the total GSM subscriber base in the country has now climbed to 580.66 million. 

50% iOS subscribers willing to share personal info

Even more may agree to share personal data for free content or other utilities. Users may now get magazines on iPad as subscribers' information was the main standoff issue between Apple and the publishers.

At a time when the mobile applications are panned by users over privacy and other security reasons, it has been found that close to half of the iOS users have no problem in sharing their information.

This came to light when magazine publishers found that close to 50 per cent of the iOS users are willing to divulge personal data for subscription and that if they get free content or other utilities, more users may agree to share their personal data. 

The readers' response is reflective of their comfort level in the secure environment run by Apple, the makers of iPhone and iPad. Mostly users do not agree to share personal data in a free for all environment. But with Apple, more users have agreed to share their data such as email address and names. The news becomes significant at the time when Apple and Google are battling problems with location tracking issues on iOS and Android phones. 

TRAI Goofs; Puts up False Figures

The report that TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) revealed last week may have just gone out to show that the nation has truly, rapidly adapted to the mobile generation. 

However, just as the celebratory bells rung louder, the truth was revealed. A bad mix-up of numbers is what best defines the report, as per the reports that have been trickling in ever since. Apparently, the TRAI analysts ‘researched’ that as of 2011, India was home to whopping 812 million mobile subscribers, the image below depicts the TRAI’s version of the magic number.

It didn’t need some rocket science technique for Voice&Data, an online resource centre for the Indian Telecom, to dish out the real picture. The TRAI had very conveniently taken up the mobile numbers to be the number signifying individual names of subscribers, which may not be necessarily true. It isn’t novelty that you see a person owning more than SIM card. In such a scenario, although there are multiple SIM cards on a person, it doesn’t make up for multiple subscribers. It was a simple calculation that went horribly wrong for the TRAI officials.