Cell operators record highest growth in March

New Delhi, April 11: Despite the disconnection of some prepaid mobile subscribers due to non-verification, cellular service providers have recorded the highest growth in number of subscribers during March. According to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the cellular mobile subscriber base in India grew by over 61 lakh.

“This is mainly due to the year-ending pressure on cellular companies. The market is expanding so fast that disconnection of some subscribers on the verification issue did not have much of an impact on subscriber growth,” said T V Ramachandran, director-general of COAI.

Earlier, record subscribers were added in November when the GSM-based cellular operators added about 50 lakh new subscribers. With this, the national GSM subscriber base touched 12.14 crore at the end of March 2007 compared with 11.53 crore as on end of February 2007, reflecting a growth rate of 5 per cent, the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) said in a statement.

CDMA mobile figures are yet to be out. In March, the cellular subscriber base of Bharti touched 3.71 crore, with the addition of over 17 lakh users. This accounts for 30.59 per cent of the market share and is followed by BSNL at 2.74 crore, with a marketshare of 22.59 per cent and additions of over 19.84 lakh subscribers.

Hutch-Essar has 2.64 crore subscribers, taking its market share to 21.78 per cent and Idea, with a market share of 11.54 per cent, has 1.4 crore subscribers in March.

Hutch-Essar added 10.98 lakh subscribers in the month of March, while Idea added 3.7 lakh mobile users in the same month.

MTNL’s GSM subscriber base in Delhi and Mumbai touched 27.46 lakh, while Spice Telecom has also over 27 lakh subscribers. Aircel’s user base in March stood at 55.14 lakh, followed by Reliance Telecom’s 43.4 lakh subscribers.

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