New Delhi: May 3, 2011 - The number of real, active mobile users in India has crossed 500 million, according to a analysis of statistics released by telecom regulator TRAI along with industry data and inputs. This is much lower than the 800 million that is projected as the official number of mobile subscribers.

Telecom watchdog, TRAI, pegs February 2011 mobile subscriber base at 791 million (826 million including landlines), in its April 6, 2011 press release with a net addition of 20 million mobile subscribers in February. Voice & Data, the Indian telecom Industry journal from South Asia’s largest specialty publisher, CyberMedia, estimates that the regulator’s corresponding press release this month will put the total mobile subscribers in March at 810 million, assuming that the net addition remains at 20 million in March 2011.

A footnote in the April 6 release provides the first caveat: “Active wireless subscribers in VLR in February 2011 are 563 million” pointing to the fact that the actual number of mobile users in India is below the 810 million or even the 791 million mark.

The VLR, or Visitor Location Register, is a database of the subscribers who have roamed into the jurisdiction of the mobile switching center (MSC) which it serves. Each base station in the network is served by only one VLR, hence a subscriber cannot be present in more than one VLR at a time. So 563 million VLR for February means that the remaining 228 million subscribers, are inactive: users (mostly prepaid ones) who have not recharged their SIMs for a long time and are in the "grace period" before disconnection. This grace period can vary significantly, sometime stretching into months or a year, even though such users are unlikely to renew and recharge.

The second major caveat is that these are subscriptions, not subscribers. If a person has two SIM cards, he will show up has two subscribers in the TRAI data.

The details of this study are being published in the forthcoming issue of Voice&Data and will be available online on voicendata.com.

The study also quotes former CMD of BSNL Kuldeep Goyal as saying “Obviously, 800 million subscriptions does not mean 800 million users, actual number of active users would be in the 450-500 million range.”

There is no firm data on multiple SIM ownership, a very major trend in India, going by the large number of dual and triple SIM handsets sold. According to conservative industry estimates multiple-SIM ownership is at least 15% to 30% of total SIMS. That is, if you randomly pick 100 mobile users in India, they will own 115 to 130 active SIMs between them. Other industry sources say this figure is too conservative, and multi-SIM ownership is well above 30%.

“Bundling of SIM cards with mobile handsets at an entry price starting from Rs. 500 and upwards, and the ‘affordable lifetime connection’ plans caused a surge in new mobile connections,” says Naveen Mishra, Lead India Telecoms Analyst at CyberMedia Research. Supporting the Voice&Data argument further, he adds. “More than a third of handsets sold in the country during the quarter ended December 31, 2010 was a dual- or triple-SIM slot phone, as compared to less than 1 in hundred multi-SIM mobile phone sales in the quarter ended March 31 2009.”

For this estimation, Voice&Data's editors simply did the following to arrive at the figure of 501 million users:

• Take the figure of 810 million for March 31 (projected from TRAI data of February 2011)
• Remove inactive/grace period subscriptions to arrive at the active VLR subscriber figure of 576 million (projected from the TRAI data of February 2011)
• Divide 576 million by 1.15 (at least 15% have multiple SIMS) to reflect a conservative estimate 501 million users.

For a population of 1,210 million people, this translates into a real wireless tele-density of 41%, and not 66%.

Says Voice&Data Chief Editor Prasanto K Roy: "If you want to compute the real tele-density, to know how many real people own a mobile phone in India, you have to exclude inactive subscriptions and multi-SIM ownership. That leaves 501 million actual phone users. The assumputions we have made are conservative. The real picture could be more stark.”

However, this huge inaccuracy has a strong silver lining.

Adds Roy: "This does mean that the addressable market for handset makers and operators alike is bigger than most people thought—over 200 million bigger. It means over 700 million people do not yet have mobile phones or subscriptions, and that makes this the biggest market in the world for the decade ahead."

So the potential of Indian telecom market increases even further in light of the actual mobile subscriber base.

About Cyber Media
CyberMedia is the largest specialty media house in South Asia and amongst India's top 5 magazine publishers. With 15 publications, 12 websites, over 100 events, and 2 weekly TV programs, it reaches out to a community of over 1.5 mn people. Its brands have been consistently leading in their respective domains. They cover infotech (Dataquest, PCQuest, CIOL.com), technology (MIT’s Technology Review India), telecom (Voice&Data), biotech (BioSpectrum), entrepreneurship (Dare), outsourcing (Global Services), and consumer electronics (Living Digital, ld2.in).

Its media services include market research (CyberMedia Research) and Content Matrix, which provides through its subsidiaries, custom publishing (TDA Group) and content management services (publication services and CyberMedia Services).

Or log on to www.voicendata.com or www.cmrindia.com or www.cybermedia.co.in.