The Hindu Business Line : Cellular base swells by 3.2 m in Dec

CELLULAR base grew by an unprecedented 3.2 million in December 2005, taking the total to 58.5 million subscribers, compared to 37.3 million users in December 2004. This is the highest monthly addition that GSM-based operators have reported ever since mobile services were launched.

The growth has been primarily driven by State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, which added close to one million new users. Bharti Cellular also added nearly 9 lakh new users during the month. The industry added just over 21 million new cellular users over the last year.

"The monthly subscriber additions in December 2005 is 225 per cent higher than the monthly subscriber growth recorded in December 2004 (1.42 million) and is double the average subscriber growth recorded in the previous 11 months of the calendar year (January-November 2005 — average subscriber additions were 1.6 million a month)," said Cellular Operator's Association of India (COAI). The CDMA-based operators including Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices have not yet reported their numbers for December.

Mr T.V. Ramachandran, Director General COAI, said "the growth in subscriber numbers was the result of a concerted effort by the GSM industry to accelerate its growth trajectory in a bid to reach the government's target of 200 million mobile subscribers by 2007."

Among all circles, Category C circles continued to witness the highest rate of growth at 10.07 per cent. Within the Category C circles, the highest addition was recorded by the North East Circle followed by Assam and Orissa. Category B circles recorded a healthy growth of over 6 per cent over the previous month. Highest additions were recorded in West Bengal, Andaman & Nicobar followed by Kerala and Rajasthan. Category A circles witnessed a growth of 5.8 per cent.

Amongst the Category A circles, Gujarat recorded highest growth over the previous month, followed by Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Metro subscribers grew 3.71 per cent over the previous month.

In absolute terms, however, Circle A states added the most with 1.13 million new sunscribers followed by Category B with 1.12 million new subscribers.

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