March 22 2004

The growth in the number of Indian mobile users continued with over 1.6 million new users being added in February, taking the total subscriber base to over 30 million. While GSM-based cellular operators added 1.2 million new users, CDMA operators roped in only 340,000.

With this, the total mobile subscriber base has gone up from 29.7 million in January to 31.4 million in February, narrowing the gap with the fixed line subscriber base of 42 million.

The biggest gainer in February was Essar-Hutchsion. Its subscriber base went up by 360,000 to touch 4.8 million. Reliance Infocomm, which launched its pre-paid card recently, came back into the reckoning with 330,000 new users. It had managed to garner less than 100,000 new users in January after it withdrew the popular Rs 501 Monsoon Hungama plan.

The Reliance numbers in February were lower than the targeted one million new users every month announced by the company at the time of the launch of its pre-paid card. Reliance, however, continues to be the largest mobile operator with 6.7 million users.

Bharti stands at the second position with over 6 million subscribers after it roped in 330,000 new users in February. Bharti had, however, added 360,000 new users in the previous month.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, which had stormed into the market initially, has slowed significantly with just 68,314 new users. The company now has 4.9 million mobile subscribers. The slowdown has been due to the lack of capacity on BSNL’s network.

The company is, however, planning to introduce 12 million additional mobile lines in the next few months.

Geographically, the Circle A states -- Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu -- have the highest concentration of mobile users with over 8 million subscribers.

Metro circles have 7.5 million mobile users. Delhi, with around 3 million mobile users, is the largest circle followed by Mumbai, with 2.7 million users.