The GSM subscriber base in the country rose marginally to 76.23 crore in October with mobile operators adding 62.8 lakh users during the month, industry body COAI said yesterday.
The GSM user base stood at 75.60 crore at the end of September 2014, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said. ”All India GSM cellular subscribers as of October 2014 stood at 762.36 million. The GSM subscribers increased by 6.28 million in October 2014 (0.83 percent increase from previous month),” COAI said. COAI, which represents telecom players like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, said the data does not include GSM subscriber number of Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices.
Reliance Jio Infocomm had also joined the body but the company is yet to start telecom services. Country’s largest mobile operator Bharti Airtel added the maximum users during the month with 18.59 lakh subscribers joining its network. Its overall user base increased to 21.34 crore at the end of October with a market share of 27.99 percent. Idea Cellular added 18.50 lakh new subscribers to take its base to 14.54 crore whereas Vodafone added 10.13 lakh users to take its base to 17.48 crore during the reported period.
Aircel added 9.54 lakh subscribers and Uninor added 4.20 lakh. The user base of operators stood at 7.68 crore and 4.22 crore respectively. Videocon added 1.71 lakh users whereas state-run MTNL added 11,907 subscribers during the period.