GSM telcos add 9.5 million subscribers in May

NEW DELHI: More than 9.5 million GSM subscribers were added in May, a body representing service providers using this technology said on Monday. The news pushed up stock prices of Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular.

Cellular Operators' Association of India, or COAI, said that Indian GSM telecom operators added 9.53 million subscribers in May, taking the all-India GSM cellular subscriber base to 590.19 million. The GSM subscriber base stood at 580.66 million at the end of April, 2011. Despite the number being the lowest addition since October 2009, when 10.76 million users were added to the GSM network, the market responded positively.

At the end of the day's trade, Bharti Airtel's scrip was up 2.35%, closing at 389.30 while its listed counterpart in the GSM operators space, Idea, closed at 79.05, up 1.8%, on Monday.

Bharti Airtel, the largest GSM player, added 2.45 million users in May, taking its total subscriber base to 167.06 million. It had a market share of 28.31% at the end of May.

Aditya Birla group firm Idea Cellular added 1.80 million users during the month to take its total user base to 93.75 million. Vodafone Essar, with a 23.62% market share, notched up 2.44 million new subscribers during the month. Its subscriber base stood at 139.42 million. Meanwhile, Aircel added 1.11 million customers to take its subscriber base to 57.06 million.

State-run telecom firms BSNL and MTNL added 0.47 million and 20,604 new users, respectively, taking their subscriber base to 87.61 million and 5.23 million, respectively.