India's wireless telephone industry continues to reach new heights (subscriber base stood at 160 mn in February), but growth has slowed. While it remains 75 per cent on a year-on-year basis, it was down to 9 per cent on a month-on-month basis. More important, according to an industry overview from Merrill Lynch, the clean up following the subscriber identification norms is still not over, and March could see a further clean up. As much as 18 per cent of the historical subscriber base (as of May 2006) remains unverified and so is in danger of being disconnected. BSNL and Reliance are yet to re-verify nearly 30-40 per cent of their subscriber base, Bharti has a pending rate of around 10 per cent and Hutch-Essar has around 4 per cent "� if all unverified subscribers are knocked out, Bharti would remain number 1, RCom Number 2, but Hutch-Essar would then become the third player, displacing BSNL.
