Growth In Cell-User Base Lowest In April
The cellular phone subscriber base increased by 4.16 per cent in April, the worst performance since June last year. The cellular subscriber base increased by 78,476 in April compared with over a lakh in March.
April also recorded the lowest increment in the subscriber base. While the number of new subscribers added till April was about 379,000, for the first time this year the average per month reduced to about 95,000 from 100,000 at the end of March.
The average growth in the first four months is about 5.33 per cent. Including April, the average monthly growth has been about 5.5 per cent in the last 10 months.
Excluding April, the average is marginally better at 5.64 per cent.
Prior to this, in percentage terms, the worst performance was recorded last June when the number of subscribers decreased by 1.1 lakh, a negative growth of about 9 per cent. In the last 12 months, however, the subscriber base has increased by over 56 per cent from about 125,100 at the end of last May.
According to the latest data released by the Cellular Operators Association of India, the subscriber base was about to touch the two million mark with a total of 1,962,787 cellular phone users in India at the end of April.
The number of subscribers in the metros stood at 8.24 lakh, while it was about 6.08 lakh, 4.84 lakh and 45,500 in the A, B and C-circles, respectively.
In terms of circle-wise new additions, there were 28,919 new subscribers added in the metros with the total number of subscribers at about 825,000.
About 23,000 new subscribers were added during April in the five A-circles, taking the total number of subscribers in these circles to 608,415.
During April, 23,878 and 2,917 new cellphone users were added in the B and C-circles, respectively. Among metro operators, Bharti Cellular, the operator in Delhi, was the biggest gainer with an increase of about 10,000 in its subscriber base. In the A-circles, Aircell with an addition of 4,795 subscribers topped the list. Tata cellular's subscriber base actually decreased, though marginally, from 59,076 in March to 58,471 in April.
Operators said the lacklustre performance could be a monthly variation. "A lot of people are awaiting the calling party pays regime and will wait for sometime to join the market," said Cellular Operators Association of India director general T V Ramachandran.