India Adds 14.5 Million GSM Subscribers in March – Vodafone Leads

India's leading Mobile Service operator Vodafone has added a total of 3.68 million GSM subscribers which is the highest number of new mobile subscribers additions in the month of March 2011. Vodafone's GSM subscriber base now reached 134.5 million, as per the COAI data.

Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) today released the GSM subscriber base for March 2011 and, quite expectantly, new additions continue at an average growth rate. The total 14.5 million new GSM subscribers being added in March at a monthly growth rate of 2.61% taking the all-India GSM cellular subscriber base to 559.55 million.

Among the GSM Mobile Service Operators, Bharti Airtel notched up 3.20 million new subscribers during the month, taking its total base to 162 million. While India's national telecom backbone and Pan India 3G Mobile service operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) added up 1.3 million new users in March-2011, taking its total subscriber base to 86.4 million.

Idea Cellular added 2.7 million new customers, boosting its subscriber base to 89.5 million, while Aircel increased its base by over 1.3 million customers to take its subscriber base to 54.8 million. Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) added 20,720 new users during the month, boosting its total base to 5.19 million at the end of March, 2011.

Uninor, one of the youngest GSM operators in India has added 1.2mn GSM subscriber while Videocon added 5,41,877 subscribers and STel managed just 1,28,429 new subscribers from 5 circles. Etisalat DB/Cheers Mobile 3,15,709 added subscribers in 13 circles.

Please note : COAI GSM Subscriber base does not include the Reliance GSM base and Tata Docomo subscriber Base (same not submitted to COAI).