Telcos add record 10.42 mn subscribers in Oct

Despite the financial slowdown, the Indian telecom industry continued its high growth rate as it added over 10 million subscribers in October, 2008.

According to the latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), the total wireless subscriber base (GSM, CDMA and WLL) increased by 10.42 million to reach 325.73 million as against 10.07 million added in the previous month.

However, the wireline segment witnessed a decline of 0.13 million pulling down the total subscriber addition (wireless and wireline) to 10.29 million.

The wireline segment decreased from 38.35 million subscribers in September, 2008 to 38.22 million in October.

During the month, the total number of phone connections in the country rose to 363.95 million as compared to 353.66 million in July, 2008. This has catalysed the telecom penetration in the country as the total teledensity (number of people having a telephone connection per 100) in the country to 31.5 per cent at the end of October, 2008 from 30.64 per cent in September this year.

The broadband penetration in the country is also witnessing a steady increase as the total broadband subscriber base crossed the 5 million mark reaching 5.05 million in October as against 4.9 million by the end of September, 2008.

In the wireless segment, Bharti Airtel led the subscriber growth with the addition of 2.7 million subscribers in October to take its wireless subscriber base to 80.2 million. Vodafone Essar came in second with a total of 2.07 million subscribers resulting in a subscriber base of 56.7 million.

Meanwhile, Reliance Communications added 1.76 million subscribers in the wireless segment to reach 57.8 million, while Tata Teleservices added about 8.2 lakh subscribers to about 30.16 million subscribers.