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Govt. directs telcos to report active subscribers
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 27 October 2010, 19:25 IST
New Delhi: In a bid to get the actual number of mobile phone subscribers in the country, the government has directed the telecom operators to report the number of active subscribers on the network instead of the number of SIM cards in the market, reports Thomas K Thomas from Business Line.
The move comes in the wake of concerns raised by various telecom operators and market analysts that the actual mobile subscriber base in the country is much lower than what is being reported every month. In the beginning, the new system will be implemented in one circle and then extended to the rest of the country. The system, proposed by DoT will consider only active customers who make calls regularly. This decision was taken in the meeting of the Telecom Commission, the apex policy-making body of the DoT, held on October 20.
Currently, the Government releases subscriber figures based on the Home Location Register of the operators. In this system, even SIM cards that are with retailers or have been given to the same individual are counted as individual subscribers. As a result, even if one person has taken four different SIM cards, it is counted as four subscribers. Based on this system, there are nearly 700 million telephone subscribers in the country with over 10 million new users being added every month.
According to a survey by market research firm Juxt Consult, there were only 304 million active subscribers in India as on May 2010 whereas operators reported 617 million users. Market watchers said that the current subscriber-linked spectrum allocation criteria being followed by the Government was acting as an incentive for operators, especially the new players, to exaggerate numbers by 30-40 percent.