NEW DELHI: After months of huge growth in mobile subscriber numbers, there seems to be a slowdown lately. In April, the GSM mobile category, represented by Bharti, Hutch, Idea and BSNL, for the first time added less than 3 million users.
During the month, only 2.93 million subscribers were added to the GSM base compared to March, when 3.78 million users were added. In February, 3.17 million users were added to the subscriber base and the first month of the year saw the user base expanded by 3.5 million.
According to the subscriber figures released by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) on Monday, the GSM user base touched 72.12 million in April, up from 69.2 million in March.
Bharti emerged as the top GSM player with 20.68 million subscribers, followed by BSNL (17.59 million), Hutch (16.06 million), Idea (7.64 million), Aircel (2.83 million), Reliance (2.01 million), Spice (1.98 million), MTNL (2.02 million), and BPL (1.31 million). In April, Bharti’s subscriber base increased to 1.10 million. Bharti has a 28.7% share of the total GSM market.
Mobile companies using the CDMA technology are yet to announce their subscriber figures. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will also issue its consolidated subscriber figures (mobile plus fixed phones) soon.
According to Trai, 41.26 million mobile subscribers were added during the financial year 2005-06. While there were 90 million mobile users in the country at the end of March 2006, fixed line connections were a little less than 50 million.
Missed call
In April, only 2.93 million subscribers were added to the GSM base
However, in March the user base had swelled by 3.78 million
The GSM user base touched 72.12 million in April, up from 69.2 million in March
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