The number of telephones in the country has continued to decline from March to June 2020 with another decline of around 6 million telephones between May-June 2020 on top of the 8.57 million decreases between March-April 2020. The number of telephones at the end of June 2020 stood at 1162.36 million, down from 1168.22 million at the end of April 2020.
The number of wireline telephones at the end of June stood at 19.81 million while wireless telephones stood at 1142.55 million at the end of June. The number of telephones remained more or less the same in rural and urban areas.
The overall density dropped to 85.98% at the end of June 2020 with wireless density seeing a decrease by 0.16%. Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka were the top five circles while Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai were the top 3 metro circles in teledensity.
Kerala, West Bengal, and Assam saw the major increase in number of telephones while Mumbai, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh recorded a fall in telephone connections. Uttar Pradesh East continued to have the highest share in telephones followed by Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Tamil Nadu.
The number of broadband subscribers stood at 683.77 million at the end of May 2020 seeing an increase of 1.13% compared to 676.14 million in April 2020. India has seen over 100 million new broadband subscribers in FY 19 out of which wired broadband-only accounted for less than a million.
