Idea has managed to add 23 lakh of users to its kitty in August, almost double to the next successful telecom operator — Bharti Airtel who managed to attract about 11.5 lakh users in the said month. However, the total GSM subscriber addition in August stood at just about 5 million, which compared to 7.65 million in the earlier month.
This was revealed by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) which released a statistical report detailing figures of markets share and number of users of GSM operators of India.
According to the report, Bharti Airtel has added 11,50,298 number of users taking its market share to 28.09 per cent, thus keeping its No 1 telecom operator status intact.
The second biggest teleco, Vodafone Essar has 23.56 per cent of market share. It has added 11,33,024 number of users in August taking the total to about 14 crore.
Idea, at No 3, has added the most number of users last month — 23,30,239, which helped it enhancing its market share to 16.09 per cent.
Videocon and STel are the only two GSM operators who have registered a negative growth, losing 6,52,383 and 67,259 number of users respectively in August.
Loss making public sector units, BSNL and MTNL though registered a meagre growth — adding about 3 lakh and 32,932 users respectively.
Other operators like Aircel, Uninor, Loop Mobile and Etisalat have also registered minor growth.
GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) is the most popular standard for mobile telephony systems in the world. CDMA is the other technology platform on which Indian telcos offer services. Tata Teleservices (TTSL), Reliance Communications and MTS are the main CDMA operators.