GSM subscribers rise after two-month fall

Arresting the two-month fall, total subscriber base of GSM operators rose by about 240,000 to 671.91 million users in October, telecom industry body COAI said on Thursday.

The total subscriber base at the end of September was 671.67 million users. In September, the subscriber base had reduced by 1.9 million users following a whopping 7.1 million fall in August.

Top three operators - Airtel, Vodafone and Idea - which account for about 68 per cent of the GSM market, added over 1.2 million users in October, according to the COAI data released on Thursday.

However, Uninor and Videocon lost 1.1 million users and 59,151 users, respectively in October, 2012. The subscriber base of Uninor stood at 41.03 million, while that of Videocon stood was at 4.39 million by the month end.

Bharti Airtel, which has 27.74 per cent market share, added about 490,000 users to take its subscriber base to 186.41 million.

Vodafone India and Idea Cellular added about 480,000 users and 230,000 million users, respectively. With this, Vodafone's subscriber base stood at 153.14 million, while that of Idea Cellular was at 115.70 million at the end of October.

Aircel added 170,000 users, taking its subscriber base to 66.78 million in October.