Telecom firms add 73 lakh customers in July

The Indian telecom players have added a total of 73 lakh (7.3 million) customers in June this year, compared with an average of 60 lakh (6 million) subscriber addition every month. This is the largest subscriber addition by the Indian telecom sector, with CDMA players adding 2.1 million (21 lakh) users and GSM 5.2 million (52 lakh) users during the month.

"This is a record subscriber addition and was effected due to the initiatives taken by the private players, especially Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices (TTSL). The companies had reduced entry-level prices of handsets further and had rolled out tariff plans suited for low them," Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI), the body of the CDMA service providers in the country, secretary general S C Khanna told Business Standard.

Reliance Communications had launched entry-level handsets priced at Rs 777, followed by Tatas at Rs 770.

According to data released by AUSPI, Bharti Airtel has recorded a total of 30,454 fixedline (CDMA) users taking it total number to 19.72 lakh, while Reliance Communications added 11.91 lakh taking total users to 2.8 crore CDMA users, while the remaining addition came from Shyam Telelink.

As per the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the body of GSM operators, its members added 5.4 million (54 lakh) new users in June. This resulted in an increase of GSM subscriber base to 136 million, an increase of 4.12 per cent, compared with 130.1 million in May 2007.

The growth was led by Bharti Airtel with addition of 19.6 lakh new subscribers, followed by Vodafone Essar with 15.4 lakh, BSNL with 4.3 lakh, Idea with 9 lakh and Spice with 1.6 lakh new subscribers.

According to a recent study by Gartner, Indian mobile subscribers would grow at 23 per cent per annum, taking the total connections to more than 462 million in 2011. The global research firm had also said that mobile penetration could increase to 38.6 per cent by 2011, from the 12.7 per cent in 2006, driven by the rural market, handset bundling offers and aggressive promotions.