India's rampant mobile subscriber growth showed no signs of slowing down in the December quarter.
The number of mobile customers grew 9.38% over the previous quarter to 687.7 million, according to statistics recently released by regulator Trai.
Indian operators recorded a combined 64.48 million net adds, and wireless teledensity reached 63.22.
Mobile continues to dominate the telephony market, with over 95% of total subscribers, and the number of wireline customers further fell to 35.1 million from 35.5 million a quarter earlier.
And while the broadband customer base grew 6.6% sequentially and 40.5% year-on-year, it was to a comparatively low 10.99 million.
But it's not all good news for India's mobile operators, with Trai finding that ARPU for both GSM and CDMA services further declined over the quarter.
ARPU for GSM services fell 27% year-on-year to 105 rupees ($2.37), while ARPU of CDMA “full mobility services” declined 17% over the same period to 68 rupees, Trai said.
Shrinking ARPU driven by intense competition has long been a strong concern for Indian operators, and these figures provide more weight to the case for consolidation in the crowded market.
MOU also declined both sequentially and year-on-year across both GSM and CDMA services.
Despite these declines, the overall telecom sector generated combined gross revenues of 429.16 billion rupees during the quarter, up nearly 8% year-on-year.