GSM user base grows 17.45 million in Nov

NEW DELHI: Indian GSM telecom operators added a whopping 17.45 million new subscribers in November, taking the all-India GSM cellular subscriber base to 526.18 million, cellular operators' association COAI said on Thursday. The GSM subscriber base stood at 508.72 million at the end of October, 2010.

Bharti Airtel, the largest GSM player, added 3.10 million new users in November, taking its total subscriber base to 149.39 million, data released by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) showed.

It had 28.39% market share as of the end of November, 2010, it added. Rival Vodafone Essar, with a 23.03% market share, notched up 3.12 million new subscribers during the month, the highest among all the service providers in the country. Its subscriber base stood at 121.16 million at the end of the reporting month.

Aditya Birla group firm Idea Cellular added 2.80 million users during the month to take its total user base to 78.82 million, while Aircel added 1.21 million customers to take its subscriber base to 48.73 million.

In addition, state-run telecom firms BSNL and MTNL added 3.01 million and 37,110 new users, respectively, taking their subscriber base to 78.19 million and 5.09 million , respectively.

In a seperate development, COAI has expanded its membership base by including CISCO India, Huawei Technologies, Qualcomm and Alcatel Lucent as associate members . “Such membership recognises the valuable role that COAI has played and will continue to play in helping companies achieve their objectives and focusing our combined attention on nation building,” COAI director-general Rajan S Mathews said.