The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has informed that the landline telephone connections in the country have decreased by over 15 per cent over the last two and a half years, from 30.79 million as of December 31, 2012 to 26.15 million at the end of June 2015. There were 28.89 million landline connections in December 2013 and 27 million in December 2014.

As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), there were 1,002.05 million telephone subscribers as of May 31, 2015, out of which 957.78 were wireless subscribers while only 26.27 million were landline subscribers. Among the landline subscribers, 21.32 million were urban subscribers and 4.95 were rural subscribers.

The Ministry is of the view that the main reasons for the decline in landline telephone connections include the growing tendency to shift to mobile services, high maintenance costs and frequent interruptions due to cable damage resulting in quality of services being affected.