Cellular base touches 3.2M in December

By agencies   |   Friday, 06 January 2006, 20:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: In the month of December 2005, cellular base grew by an unprecedented 3.2 million, taking the total to 58.5 million subscribers, compared to 37.3 million users in the year ago period. 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 (BSNL), which added close to one million new users. Private cellular company, Bharti Cellular also added nearly 900,000 new users during the month. The industry added just over 21 million new cellular users over the last year. According to the Cellular Operator’s Association of India (COAI), “The monthly subscriber additions in December 2005 is 225 percent higher than 1.42 million recorded during the same month last year.” The CDMA-based operators including Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices have not yet reported their numbers for December. “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,” COAI’s Director General, T V Ramachandran said. Among all circles, Category ‘C’ circles continued to witness the highest rate of growth at 10.07 percent. Of which, 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 percent over the previous month. Highest additions were recorded in West Bengal, Andaman & Nicobar followed by Kerala and Rajasthan. In Category ‘A’ circles witnessed a growth of 5.8 percent. In this category, Gujarat recorded highest growth over the previous month, followed by Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.