Idea Cellular recorded over 150 million subscribers on its pan-India network as on 31st December, 2014. Idea recorded the highest growth in Net Adds in the industry, with over 21 million subscribers joining the network in the calendar year 2014.
Idea’s unprecedented growth in the last five years has catapulted it to being the 6th largest operator globally, from being the 6th largest in India, in subscriber terms. Idea added nearly 100 million subscribers in the last five years to cross the 150 million subscriber milestone, recently. During this period, Idea was the only operator in India to record over 1 percentage point increase in Revenue Market Share (RMS), YoY every year.
Idea has substantially increased its network capacity in the recent years. The company added 11,635 2G and 7,133 3G sites in the 12 months ending September 30th, 2014, and is consistently investing in optical fibre cable (OFC) transmission network to tap the future potential of wireless broadband needs of the growing customer base.
The company has rolled out over 87,600 km OFC network and has over 4,450 OFC PoPs (3G & 2G), across the country. The fibre backhaul network of the company optimally serves Idea’s 2G, 3G, NLD, ILD, ISP and Wireless Broadband needs. Idea has also introduced worlds’ latest high capacity 100G DWDM network technology to cater to the rising data demand.
The company has consistently invested in spectrum acquisition in the 900, 1800 and 2100 MHz bands in the last few years, and now holds a total of 259.5 MHz of spectrum.
