India GSM subscribers top 184m in February (India)Bharti Airtel builds on its market lead with biggest gains followed by Vodafone Essar.
Indian GSM subscriptions reached 184.67 million in February, up 6 million from a month earlier, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said Monday.
India’s biggest carrier by subscribers Bharti Airtel recorded the biggest gains, adding 2.25 million users, giving it a total customer base of 59.67 million.
That figure represents a 32.31% market share, according to a statement from the COAI.
Vodafone Essar added 1.41 million customers in February, up from the 1.28 million it gained a month earlier, giving it a total of 42.55 million subscribers.
Idea Cellular and state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) gained 918,871 and 824,284 new users respectively. At the end of February Idea had 22.87 million customers, while BSNL reported 34.57 million, giving it a market share of 18.72%.
However, the figures published by the COAI do not include Reliance Communications, which is predominantly a CDMA operator, but also operates what is currently a limited GSM service. It had 5.7 million customers at the end of January, according to the COAI.
GSM subscriptions are set to get a further boost, since nine of India’s CDMA operators, including Tata Teleservices and the aforementioned Reliance, were granted licences in 2007 to enter the GSM space.
Tata in January issued an RFP for a network contract valued at $4.8 billion, with reports at the time suggesting the deal could go to Huawei, Nokia Siemens Networks or Ericsson .
“India is the world’s fastest growing mobile phone market with the lowest call tariffs of below two U.S. cents [per minute]. The market has emerged as the cynosure of global telecoms giants,” said the COAI in a statement.
Virgin Mobile became the latest global player to enter the Indian market, when it signed a deal last week to sell Virgin-branded services on Tata’s CDMA network.
According to the COAI, the Indian government aims to reach a total of 500 million mobile users – both CDMA and GSM - by 2010, having passed the halfway point to that total last year.
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