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After a disappointing month of December 2012 which saw net subscriber additions dwindling across telecom circles, the month of January 2013 has brought some cheer for about nine telecom operators.
Among all the 22 circles, it is Gujarat which has seen the maximum net subscriber additions of over 470,000 in the month of January 2013, according to the latest figures by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
Following Gujarat are other circles like Rajasthan, Odisha, West Bengal, UP (East), Madhya Pradesh, UP (West), Delhi and Maharashtra who added net subscribers in January as against a dip in net additions in December 2012. However, the remaining circles saw further dip in the same.
In terms of telecom operators, Unitech's Uninor continued its growth streak in Gujarat circle by registering maximum number of net subscriber additions in January at 219,935, followed closely by Idea Cellular at 208,017.
The other operators that saw rise in net additions in Gujarat for the month of January 2013 include Bharti Airtel (172759), BSNL (10789), Vodafone (10000) and Reliance (3803).
However, operators like Tata (-61884), Videocon (-38501) and Sistema (MTS) (-7626) posted further dip net additions in Gujarat circle.
It needs to be mentioned here that in Uninor, Idea and BSNL were the only telecom operators in Gujarat to have registered positive net additions during the month of December 2012.
Even nationally, Uninor emerged as the leader in growth in net additions in the month of January 2013 among all telecom operators for wireless subscribers at 918,552.
Nationally, the number of telephone subscribers in India decreased to 893.15 million at the end of January, 2013 from 895.51 million at the end of December 2012, thereby showing a monthly growth rate of -0.26 per cent. The share of urban subscribers has declined to 61.87 per cent from 62.20 per cent whereas share of rural subscribers has increased to 38.13 per cent in the month of January 2013. With this, the overall teledensity in India decreased to 73.07 at the end of January, 2013 from 73.34 of the previous month.
