Budget expectations, competition slow sectors
The growth in cellular subscriptions dipped roughly 13 per cent in February with 5.93 lakh new users compared to an average monthly addition of 6.75 lakh in the last three months, according to data released by the Cellular Operators Association of India.
Though this is not the first time month-on-month subscription growth has slowed this financial year, industry analysts attribute the February dip to the introduction of Reliance Infocomm's competitively priced limited mobility service.
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The total subscriber base has, however, increased 5.31 per cent from 111.63 lakh in January to 117.56 lakh in February and is on course to touch 120 lakh by March.
The year-on-year subscription growth to February, however, has been been a substantial 94 per cent.
Among the additions in February, the biggest gainer has been state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) which added 3 lakh new users in the non-city circles.
This is, however, lower than the 4.75 lakh new cell users that BSNL added the previous month.
In the city circles, service providers added 1.27 lakh new users, 3.06 per cent higher than the previous month. There were 42.9 lakh cell users in the metro circles at the end of February. Delhi was still the largest market with 17.4 lakh subscribers and Airtel was the single largest operator with 8.6 lakh users in Delhi.
Private operators have added only 1.6 lakh new users in February. This is however 60,000 more than what the private operators added in January.