India added over 20 mn mobile users in Feb

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Indian companies signed up 20.2 million mobile subscribers in February, taking total users in the world's fastest growing mobile phone market to 791.38 million, data from the sector regulator, TRAI, showed.

Bharti Airtel topped the chart with 159 million users and added 3.20 million in February. Reliance Communications came second with 132.18 million.

While the share of urban subscribers declined to 66.36 per cent from 66.42 per cent, the share of rural subscribers increased from 33.58 per cent to 33.64 per cent, the report said.

With this, the total number of telephone subscriber base touched 826.25 million, registering a growth of 2.50 per cent.

Teledensity at 69.29 p.c

Overall teledensity in India reached 69.29 per cent.

However, according to the report, of the total 791.38 million subscribers in February, only 562.98 million subscribers were active subscribers on the date of peak visitor location register (VLR).

VLR is a temporary database of the subscribers who have roamed into the particular area, which it serves. Each base station in the network is served by exactly one VLR, hence a subscriber cannot be present in more than one VLR at a time.

Following are the net additions by mobile operators in February and their total subscriber base in India, the world's second-largest wireless market after China.     

Bharti Airtel                3.20 Mn           159.00 Mn               

Reliance Comm            3.31 Mn           132.18 Mn  

Vodafone Essar           3.56 Mn           130.92 Mn 

BSNL                         1.49 Mn           90.31 Mn 

Tata Teleservices        1.60 Mn           87.65 Mn   

Idea Cellular                2.51 Mn          86.80 Mn

Aircel                         1.67 Mn          53.50 Mn   

Unitech Wireless          1.27 Mn          21.58 Mn

Small players

Sistema Shyam            517,986           9.61 Mn

Videocon                    552,850           6.56 Mn

MTNL                         22,532            5.45 Mn 

Loop                          17,161             3.08 Mn

S Tel                         177,685           2.69  Mn      

HFCL Infotel                103,647          1.39 Mn

Etisalat DB                  199,796            0.65 Mn

(With inputs from IANS)