New subscriber additions by India's mobile operators appears to be slowing down - the country added around 11.46 million mobile subscribers in April 2009, the lowest in a month in 2009. Compared to additions in the first three months of 2009, this is surely a significant drop. After adding more than 28 million subscribers in January and February, India had added 15.64 wireless subscribers during the month of March 2009. Total subscriber additions in the Jan-March quarter stood at more than 43 million, a world record by all accounts.
Reliance Communications, which offers both GSM and CDMA mobile services, had added around 2.6 million new subscribers during March 2009. Compared to that, it only added around 1.75 million subscribers in April, according to data from AUSPI. In January and February, the operator had added more than 8 million subscribers.
As the April GSM subscriber data shows, almost all GSM operators witnessed a negative growth in monthly subscriber additions. Market leader Bharti Airtel saw only a marginal growth of 0.1% in month on month subscriber additions, according to the data released by industry group Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). State-owned BSNL, which had added around 2.5 million subscribers in March, saw the biggest drop in monthly growth. Idea Cellular saw a 25.8% drop in its month additions.
With subscriber additions slowing down, it's going to be challenging for the new operators to take on the current incumbents. However, Aircel's performance in April is noteworthy and may interest the new operators. Aircel launched its GSM service in several parts of India only recently and had registered a 10.5% growth in its monthly subscriber additions in April.
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