Guj drops to 9th place in net subscriber additions in Feb

After ruling the roost in terms of net wireless telecom subscriber additions in January 2013, Gujarat dropped to ninth place for the month of February 2013. Adding net wireless telecom subscribers at 10 per cent, Gujarat fell behind other states like Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.

As per the latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data, Gujarat added over 475000 net subscribers in February as against 470000 addition in January.

Among telecom operators, Idea Cellular, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone overtook Unitech's Uninor in terms of net subscriber additions. For the month of February, while Idea added 145,718 net subscribers or 1.77 per cent up from January 2013, Airtel and Vodafone added 135,390 (1.93 per cent) and 111,884 (0.70 per cent), respectively. However, Uninor saw itself being pushed to fourth place in terms of net subscriber additions in Gujarat for February 2013 for 85984 or 1.84 per cent net subscriber additions over January 2013.

On the other hand, telecom operators like Videocon, Aircel and Sistema (MTS) saw a reduction in net subscribers for February. At 67084 net reduction in subscribers or 10.84 per cent, Videocon led the pack, followed by Aircel (-8882 or -3.01 per cent) and Sistema (-3624 or -1.61 per cent), respectively.

Nationally too, Idea emerged as the leading telecom operator for adding highest net subscribers in February at 2.89 million or 2.48 per cent as against January 2013. Following Idea were Bharti Airtel and Vodafone at 2.42 million net subscriber additions (1.32 per cent) and 2.18 million (1.48 per cent), respectively.

Contrary to its growth streak in Gujarat, Unitech's Uninor has seen the largest reduction in net subscribers nationally at 8.34 million in February 2013, down by 20.81 per cent against January 2013. The other two major reductions were that of Aircel (-698,506) and Tata Teleservices (-692,239), respectively.

It needs to be mentioned here that in December 2012 when the industry had seen a major reduction in telecom subscriptions, Uninor, Idea and BSNL were the only telecom operators in Gujarat to have registered positive net additions.

Even nationally, Uninor emerged as the leader in growth in net additions in the month of January 2013 among all telecom operators for wireless subscribers at 918,552.