Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) today released India’s ‘GSM Subscriber Figures for March 2012.
Bharti Airtel tops in the new subscriber additions, added a total of 2.5 million new GSM subscribers followed by IDEA Cellular added the 2nd largest number of subscribers with 2.01 million in March. Bharti Airtel now has more than 181 million GSM customers with a 27.22% market share.
According to the data released by COAI total 6.87 million new GSM subscribers added with 1.04% increase from previous month taking the all-India GSM cellular subscriber base to 664.08 million at the end of March 2012.
Videocon once again lost 0.25 million subscribers. The user base of Videocon stood at 5.95 million.AIRCEL also lost 0.68 million customers and its subscriber base was at 62.57 million.
Among the leading GSM Mobile Service Operators, Vodafone India added 1.02 million new customers, boosting its subscriber base 150.46 million. Uninor that lost licences in the SC’s 2G judgment, notched 1.29 million new customers. Its user base was at 42.43 million by March-end.
State run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) added 0.89 million taking their subscriber base to 94.67 million. Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) added 62399 new users during the month, boosting its total base to 5.93 million at the end of March ’2011.
Other Operators such as STel, Etisalat DB (Cheers Mobile) and Loop Telecom (except Loop Mobile -Mumbai) have announced shutting down of mobile services as earlier we shared on TelecomTalk and are now helping their users move to other operators through Mobile Number Portability (MNP).
Please note : COAI GSM Subscriber base does not include the Reliance Communications (Rcom) and Tata Docomo’s GSM subscriber Base (same not submitted to COAI).