India has only 483 million mobile subscribers

TRAI has been under pressure from various operators, stakeholders and market analysts to ask all telecom service providers to report their active subscriber numbers. Concerns were raised that the actual number of subscribers are much lower than reported.
Latest data released by TRAI has proven the apprehensions of stakeholders to be true. This data reveals that there are only 483 million active subscribers in India. Contrast this figure to the reported 723 million total mobile users in the country.
We, however, feel that even this number does not reflect the true figure and that the actual number of active subscribers is much lower.
The reason for our skepticism is that for one, TRAI considers those subscribers active who have used their mobiles at least once during a month after activating a connection, while research has proven that many pre paid subscribers buy a connection and abandon it within days.
Moreover, current subscriber data comes at a time when only 70 per cent of mobile subscribers’ locations, usage patterns and similar details are available. This data is collectively called the visitor location register or VLR. The remaining 30 per cent of users have all been considered active by TRAI. Instead, the Regulator could at least have extrapolated results regarding those subscribers about whom it did not have data, based on the results that it did have, rather than assuming something that cannot be true.
We earlier published a story pegging the total active user base at only 304 million and it seems our estimate was pretty close.