India adds 7.79 mn mobile users in Oct

Telecom operators added 7.79 million mobile subscribers in October 2011, taking the total number of telephone users in the country to 914.59 million, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said today.

According to the data released by the Trai, mobile subscriber base increased to 881.4 million by October end from 873.61 million in the preceding month, registering a growth of 0.89%.

With this, the overall teledensity (telephones per 100 people) in India reached 76.03%.

However, the number of active mobile subscribers, according to the visitor location register (VLR) data, during the month of was 626.18 million.

VLR numbers provide details on active customers at any given point of time, excluding switched-off and out-of-the- coverage area customers.

The growth in the wireless category was led by Uninor, which added 2.66 million new users, taking its subscriber base to 32.31 million by the end of October 2011.

Tata Teleservices lost 0.93 million and its subscriber base stood at 87.83 million.

Country's largest private operator Bharti Airtel added 0.94 million subscribers, taking its user base to 173.73 million. Vodafone added 0.92 million new customers to take its user base to 145.91 million.

Idea Cellular and Aircel added 1.63 million and 0.48 million users, respectively, during the period. Idea's subscriber base stood at 101.81 million at the end of October 2011, while that of Aircel stood at 60.28 million.

RCom added 1.03 million new subscribers to take its user base to 148.11 million, while SSTL added 0.74 million new users to take its total userbase to 14.01 million.

State-run telcos BSNL and MTNL added 0.40 million and 31,788 new users in October. The subscriber base of BSNL stood at 96.19 million and 5.61 million, respectively.