sathishgobi

The number of telephone subscribers touched 543.20 million at the end of November, taking tele-density closer to the half-way mark, driven by a record 17.65 million new additions in wireless telephony, sectoral regulator Trai said today.

The telephone subscribers base rose from 525.65 million in October, registering a growth rate of 3.34 per cent, to 543.20 million in November. With this record addition, the overall tele-density has touched 46.32 per cent.

The wireless subscriber base rose from 488.40 million in October to 506.04 million in November, a monthly growth of 3.61 per cent. Wireless tele-density is at 43.15 per cent now.

Aided by low tariff plans like per-second billing, the mobile operators have been adding large number of new subscribers one month after another. In November, the GSM operators added 11.64 million new users with Bharti Airtel adding 2.8 million. The two dual technology operators -- RCom and Tata Tele-- have added 2.2 million and 3.3 million users in the month. In fact, Tata Tele added the highest number of subscribers in November.

Maintaining its downward spiral, the wireline subscriber base declined from 37.25 million in October to 37.16 million at the end of November. The state-run BSNL and MTNL hold 85.35 per cent of the wireline market. However, they lost 0.13 million subscribers in November, bringing down the overall wireline tele-density to 3.17 per cent.

Total broadband subscriber base has increased from 7.40 million in October to 7.57 million in November, showing a growth of 2.26 per cent.

sathishgobi

Tata Teleservices adds highest mobile users in Nov

Telecom operator Tata Teleservices today said its subscriber addition in November at 3.3 million is the highest for the fourth time in a row among all service providers, including GSM operators.

“Tata Teleservices has added 3,329,215 new subscribers in November 2009 from its CDMA (Tata Indicom) and GSM operations (TATA DOCOMO) put together. In October too, TTSL had added 3.8 million new subscribers,” said the company.

Reliance Communications and Tata Tele are dual technology service providers.

During the month, Bharti Airtel, which operates on GSM technology added 2.8 million mobile subscribers (as per COAI) while RCom added 2.2 million wireless users from both GSM and CDMA division (as per AUSPI).

“It is gratifying to emerge as the top grosser in the industry in terms of new subscriber additions, for the fourth consecutive month. We have added close to 15 million new subscribers over the last four months.

In the recent past, the company have announced offers such as ‘Pay-for-exactly-what-you-use¿ pricing paradigm for roaming services as well on the TATA DOCOMO platform, he said adding, from the Tata Indicom stable, customers have access to the innovative ‘Pay-Per Call’ offer, wherein a subscriber speaks for three minutes and the next three minutes are free.

Also they have the unique per second plan, Sardana added.

Competition is expected to become stiffer in India, which is also the fastest-growing mobile-telephone market, with more companies launching their services.

Unitech Wireless Ltd, a joint venture between Norwegian telecom giant Telenor ASA and Indian real-estate company Unitech Ltd, is the latest entrant. STel, another mobile operators has also started its services in some parts, including Delhi.

tariff plans from new service providers to win customers have forced established players such as Bharti and Vodafone Essar to join a price war, bringing call charges to as low as one paise a minute.