NEW DELHI: There was an increase of approximately nine million broadband subscribers between December 2014 and January 2015 with the number going up from 85.74 million to 94.49 million. According to reports received by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) from service providers, this signified a monthly growth rate of 10.21 per cent.

As in previous months, the largest growth was seen in the mobile devices users (phones and dongles) segment with 78.66 million subscribers by January end as compared to 69.99 million a month earlier, signifying a monthly growth rate of 12.38 per cent.

Fixed Wireless subscribers (Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, Point-to-Point Radio & VSAT) showed a growth of 1.59 per cent, going up from 430,000 to 440,000.  

Wired subscribers increased by 0.49 per cent from 15.32 million to 15.39 million.

The top five service providers constituted 83.41 per cent market share of total broadband subscribers at the end of January 2015. These service providers were Bharti Airtel (20.29 million), BSNL (19.07 million), Vodafone (17.86 million), Idea Cellular (14.12 million) and Reliance Communications Group (7.47 million).

Wireless subscribers with less than 1MB data usage in a month have not been considered as internet/broadband subscribers by Reliance Communication Group and Idea Cellular Ltd.

As on 31 January, the top five wired broadband service providers were BSNL (9.98 million), Bharti Airtel (1.42 million), MTNL (1.14 million), Atria Convergence Technologies (0.63 million) and YOU Broadband (0.43 million).

Whereas the top five wireless broadband service providers were Bharti Airtel (18.87 million), Vodafone (17.86 million), Idea Cellular (14.12 million), BSNL (9.09 million) and Reliance Communications Group (7.36 million) by January-end.