India’s explosive mobile services market continued its strong growth as 9.16 million wireless subscribers were gained in August, versus July’s second highest ever of 9.22 million net additions, reported the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Total mobile phone subscriber base in India stood at 305.24 million at the end of August 2008.
In comparison, China’s subscribers totaled about 616 million at end August, as the four main Chinese cellular operators added 7.7 million new mobile users for the month, up from 7.6 million in July. There were 57.31 billion text messages sent in the month.
India’s No. 1 mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, continued to impress with its new additions of 2.7 million mobile users, about 30% market share of August’s net subscribers, to take its total subscriber base to 74.8 million wireless subscribers. The company recently launched the Airtel Innovation Fund with an initial 2 billion rupees (US$44 million) to promote content and technology development.
Reliance Communications, the second largest Indian telecom service provider, signed on 1.75 million new mobile users to total 54.3 mil while Vodafone Essar added 1.81 million new users to 52.8 million.
For the month of August, cellular giant China Mobile was leading the Chinese wireless market with 71.4% share and gained 7.175 million new wireless subscribers, on par with 7.1 million added in the previous month.
The company, which earns double the total profit at its three closest domestic rivals, had a total subscriber base of 428,869 million users. It recorded total 59.53 million new subscribers during the first eight months of 2008, 7.44 million each month on average.
China Unicom ended August with 171.8 million total subscribers, with 129.46 GSM subscribers, up from 128.55 million in the last month. Unicom added 511,000 new GSM users while 398,000 CDMA accounts were dropped.
In May, the Chinese government had ordered Unicom, the nation’s second-largest wireless operator, to buy China Netcom in a reorganization of the Chinese telecoms industry to merge into three companies. China Mobile, the world’s biggest phone company by market value, plans to expand its services by offering broadband Internet after the restructuring.
China Netcom, the second largest fixed line and broadband service provider in this country before the telecom regroup, lost 407,000 telephone users in August, a trend observed for 7 consecutive months. By the end of this August, it had 107.8 million fixed line subscribers and 24.25 mil broadband users.
Similarly, China Telecom lost 690,000 fixed line users, a trend continued for 13 months, and totaled 213.6 million telephone users by the end of this August. For the first eight months of this year, it had lost 6.73 million users.
Broadband continued to see strong growth in August, with China Telecom adding 690,000 new broadband users to 41.45 mil and Netcom adding 270,000 users to total nearly 24.3 mln.
From January to July 2008, China reported a total of 11.4 million new broadband Internet access subscribers, and the total number of broadband users reached 77.8 million, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.
