The total telephone user base in India has touched 943.49 million in the month of February with 7.44 million more subscribers adding to the tally, according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India TRAI).  

In the mobile segment Idea cellular and Uninor who is set to lose 22 licences following the Supreme Court February 2G verdict fuelled the growth by adding 2.58 million 2.34 million user respectively. The mobile phone base in the country reached 911.17 million in February registering 0.82% growth over the month of January when user base stood at 903.73 million.

Sistema Shyam Teleservices, Videocon and Loop, whose licences were also cancelled, added 2.31 lakh, 3.48 lakh and 11,426 new users, respectively.

The overall teledensity (telephones per 100 people) in India reached 78.10% in February.

However, the number of active mobile subscribers, according to the visitor location register (VLR) data, was 670.65 million on the date of Peak VLR for the month of February 2012.

VLR numbers provide details on active customers at any given point of time, excluding switched-off and out-of-the- coverage area customers.

The country'''s largest operator Airtel added 1.82 million subscribers and its users base stood at 178.77 million.

Reliance Communications and Vodafone added 0.97 million and 0.83 million new customers to take their subscriber base to 152 million and 149.44 million, respectively.

State-owned BSNL and MTNL added 0.11 million and 34,988 new users in February, respectively. Their subscriber base stood at 97.75 million and 5.77 million, respectively.

Aircel added 0.79 million new subscribers, while Tata Teleservices lost 1.83 million subscribers in the reported period.

Wireline subscriber base declined from 32.39 million at the end of January to 32.33 million at the end of February 2012. BSNL and MTNL hold 80.76 per cent of the wireline market share.

Broadband subscriber base increased from 13.42 million at the end of January to 13.54 million at February-end.

In February the number of the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) request facility was 4.32 million with Gujarat receiving maximum number of requests with 3.42 million, followed by Rajasthan (3.26 million from north-western region.

Karnataka top in MNP requests in Southern and Eastern India with 3.94 million followed by Andhra Pradesh with 3.46 million.