India added 13.82 million new mobile subscribers in February, down from 15.41 million a month earlier, according to Indian telecom regulator TRAI. India’s total number of mobile subscribers rose to 376.12 million at end-February from 362.30 million at the end of January.

While China added 18.55 million new mobile phone subscribers in the first two months of 2009 and total wireless subscriber base stood at 659.78 million as of end-February 2009. China Mobile subscribers sent 607.1 billion SMSs last year, up by over 100 billion from the last year, and downloaded more than 76 million full music tracks.

India’s GSM subscribers totaled 277.5 million by end-February, accounting for nearly 75% of total wireless market share. According to figures released by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), GSM players added 10.84 million new subscribers in March, taking total GSM subscriptions for the fiscal year to 288.3 million.

The numbers exclude subscriptions for Reliance Communications, the CDMA service provider that recently launched GSM services, because the company does not reveal GSM numbers separately.

If the estimates of 2.5 million to 2.7 million GSM subscribers for Reliance Communications are added, the total monthly increase for GSM subscriptions will be 13.54 million.

At this rate, India’s GSM subscriber base is growing at more than double the monthly growth rate of China, which is adding around 6 million customers every month.

“Though March has more days and companies push sales at the end of the financial year, we expect to see monthly incremental growth of 14 to 15 million consumers in 2009-10. Our estimate is that mobile penetration will go up from 35% currently to 50% by the end of this financial year,” said TV Ramachandran, COAI secretary- general.

COAI has predicted that India will have around 500 million GSM subscribers by the end of 2009-10 and over 800 million by 2012 . The country would hit the one billion market in a few years after that.

Much of the growth has come from state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, which added over 2.5 million subscribers in March, as against 1.5 million in February, growing 5.67% against an overall growth of 3.91%. “For BSNL, capacity has been the main problem and the March figures show that the recent equipment orders and installation have helped it create more capacity,” said Harit Shah, telecom analyst, Angel Broking.

New service providers have added to the momentum. Aircel has lined up nation-wide launches (it recently launched services in Delhi and Mumbai) and three or four new players are expected to launch services by the middle or end of this year. These include Swan Telecom, Unitech Wireless and Loop Telecom.

Source – Business Standard