NEW DELHI: The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) continues to top the list of broadband service providers in the country with a market share of 60.74 per cent in the first quarter of 2013.

The state-run BSNL has 13.12 million internet subscribers at the end of March 2013, according to the report for the first quarter by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
Reliance Communications is the second highest provider with 2.49 million internet users followed by MTNL with 1.96 million.

TRAI says the total number of internet subscribers including internet access by wireless phone subscribers at the end of March 2013 was 164.81 million. This telecom statistics does not include internet accessed by mobile phones.

There were 21.61 million internet subscribers excluding those subscribers accessing internet through wireless phone at the end of March 2013 as compared to 21.57 million at the end of December 2012, registering a quarterly growth of 0.16 per cent.

In the internet subscription (excluding internet access through wireless phone), the share of broadband subscription is 69.65 per cent and share of narrowband subscription is 30.35 per cent at the end of March 2013.

TRAI says the number of broadband subscribers increased from 14.98 million at the end of December 2012 to 15.05 million at the end of March 2013, registering a quarterly growth of 0.45 percent and year-on-year growth of 8.98 percent.

The number of narrowband subscribers decreased from 6.59 million to 6.56 million.