November 2009 Sees 11.08 Million New GSM Subscribers Added

Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has released the GSM subscriber base for November 2009 and, quite expectantly, new additions continue at a higher rate. There has been highest growth rate registered due to “Per second Billing” adopted by most all GSM operators in last month. The number of new GSM subscribers being added in November month 11.08 million as compared to 10.76 million subscribers added in October. The additions were at a monthly growth rate of 3.12%.

Among the GSM Mobile Service Operators, Vodafone Essar added 2.7mn new users in November, taking its total base to 88.60mn while market leader and largest GSM operator Bharti Airtel saw its total base rise by 2.8mn to 116.01mn. Idea Cellular added 2.55mn new customers, boosting its subscriber base to 55.18mn, while Aircel increased its base by over 1.6mn to 29.3mn.

BSNL added 1.02mn new customers, taking its reach to 55.1mn. Loop Mobile added 50,303 new subscribers, taking its total to 2.59mn. MTNL added 73,109 new customers, boosting its total base to 4.58mn.

In terms of growth rate Aircel registered the highest growth of 5.79% with 1.6 million subscribers while Idea cellular also recorded its best performance in terms of monthly additions with 4.78% and 2.55 million new subscribers. Market leader Airtel managed a growth of 2.47% and 2.8 million new subscribers while BSNL recorded 2.27% growth but only 1.2 million additions. Vodafone Essar managed a growth of 3.24% with 2.78 million new additions. If we compare the circle-wise growth than Uttar Pradesh (East) and UP West telecom circle managed the highest growth rate of 5.2% and 5.16%respectively while Tamil Nadu which has the highest number of operators offering GSM-based mobile services recorded the highest additions of 2.89 million new subscriber additions in last month.

GSM Opertaor wise % market share - Nov'2009