India saw addition of 13.7 million new GSM subscribers, taking the total count over 556.6 million in the month of January 2011.
Bharti Airtel led the pack by adding more than 3.3 million new subscribers, taking its total subscriber base to 155.7 million, as per the latest GSM subscriber base figures released by Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).
New telecom operator Etisalat DB registered maximum growth rate of 70.85 per cent in its subscriber base among all GSM players. It added 1,87,675 new subscribers, taking its total subcriber base to 4,52,574.
Contrary to the story of growth in number of GSM subcribers, Videocon’s subcriber base declined by 17.87 per cent to 6 million from 7.3 million in the previous month.
Vodafone followed Bharti Airtel in addition of subcribers by adding 3.1 million new users taking its subscriber base to over 127.3 million.
Subscriber base of Idea Cellular reached 84.2 million with 2.5 million new additions.
State run telecom company BSNL inched closer to total subscriber base of Idea cellular by adding 2.2 million new users. The total subscriber of the company crossed 83.5 million last month.
Another state run telecom company, MTNL, added 37,586 new users in its two circles of operations, Delhi and Mumbai. The subscriber base of MTNL is now over 5.15 mn.
Aircel’s subscriber base reached over 51.8 million with more than 1.66 million new additions.
Subscriber base of other new telecom operators STel, Uninor, Loop Mobile was at 2.5 million, 20 million and 3.06 million respectively.
COAI’s report did not include GSM subscriber base details of Reliance Communication and Tata DOCOMO.