Defying the trend wherein telecom industry lost subscribers in the October—December quarter, state—owned operators BSNL and MTNL added about three lakh users during the three months.

BSNL added 2.9 lakh new users, highest during the quarter, while MTNL added 10,000 subscribers, sectoral regulator TRAI said in its performance indicator report.

Led by the net additions, BSNL has also increased its market share to 11.56 per cent in December 2012 from 10.99 per cent in September 2012.

Barring Quadrant (HFCL), which added 90,000 users, all the other private operators together lost around 42 million subscribers during the three months.

“In terms of net additions during the quarter, BSNL (0.29 million) has added the highest number of subscribers, followed by Quadrant (0.09 million) and MTNL (0.01 million).

All other service providers recorded negative growth during the quarter,” TRAI said.

Reliance Communications lost the maximum of 16.32 million users followed by Tata Teleservices (8.80 million), Vodafone (5.19), Bharti Airtel (4.02 million), Aircel (3.26 million), Sistema Shyam Teleservices (1.71 million) and Idea Cellular (1.52 million) during the reported period, TRAI said.

BSNL attributed the net additions as a result of better quality of service and good coverage.

“We are providing better quality of service by improving the operations and maintenance of network. Also we have deployed more equipment in improving the coverage and capacity under phase 7 of GSM project,” said BSNL CMD R K Upadhyay.

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