Nearly 14 mn additions take GSM subscriber base to 421 mn

As per the figures released by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) on GSM subscribers for March, almost 14 million new subscribers were added in the month, taking the GSM subscriber base to 421.86 million.
Maximum additions came from Circle B with close to 5.8 million GSM additions. Circle B had shown maximum GSM subscriber addition in the month of February as well with 5.5 million additions. Circle A registered about 4.6 million additions while circle C and the metros added 2.4 million and over 1.2 million subscribers, respectively.
The figures also show that UP (East) registered maximum additions at almost 1.5 million new subscribers. This was followed by Tamil Nadu (excluding Chennai) with over 1.1 million additions and Bihar with a million new subscribers. Bihar had registered the highest number of additions in February with nearly 1.3 million additions.
Among operators, Vodafone registered the maximum number of additions at over 3.6 million, taking its subscriber base to almost 101 million. Bharti Airtel, with an additional 3 million subscribers remained at the top with a total subscriber base of about 127.6 million. BSNL, Aircel and Idea Cellular added nearly 2.5 million, 2 million and 1.7 million subscribers, respectively.
While S Tel, a new entrant, added about 280,000 subscribers to reach the one million subscribers mark, Uninor, which is also a relatively new operator, had 700,000 additions as compared to 1 million subscriber additions in February.
According to TRAI, Circle A consists of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu (including Chennai), Maharashtra and Goa. Circle B comprises Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West), West Bengal, Sikkim and Lakshadweep. Circle C comprises Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Assam, the North East, Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. The metros are Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.