Idea has managed to add 23 lakh of users to its kitty in August, almost double to the next successful telecom operator &#151 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 &#151 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 &#151 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.

US chipmaker Qualcomm Inc’s application for internet service provider (ISP) licence, after it won Broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum in June last year, has been rejected by telecom ministry of India.

Reacting to the news, a spokesperson of the company said, “We received a notice from the Indian Department of Telecommunications on September 21, 2011 informing us that the license to the companies formed with our Indian partners, for use of the spectrum, which Qualcomm won at last year’s BWA auction, has been rejected on grounds that we find to be baseless. In fact, the application process was fully complied with, and we will continue to work with the Indian authorities to resolve this matter.”

This move is bound to effect Indian consumers who will lose out on affordable and faster wireless internet services.
“Multiple trials were conducted along with our partners and have been extremely successful. Any further delay in award of licence will deprive the Indian consumers in realising these benefits, thereby severely impacting India’s broadband plans,” the company said to DNA.

4G BWA (broadband wireless access) spectrum was auctioned soon after the 3G auctions last year. While Reliance bagged spectrum in all 22 circles, Airtel got licences for four circles, Aircel for eight, Tikona in five circles, and Qualcomm also bagged spectrum in four circles. BSNL and MTNL had got spectrum even before the auction but have so far launched WiMax in very few locations.

Both LTE and WiMax, called 4G or BWA technology, offer very high speed wireless broadband access at theoretical speeds greater than 100 Mbps; while users can access real speeds of 10 Mbps on these networks. What is also good is the fact that LTE is backward compatible with both GSM and CDMA networks.

Eyeing the festive season, Uninor has rolled out an exciting Talk time offer for its customers in Karnataka. This offer will allow consumers to earn additional talk time ranging from 5 -20 per cent based on the recharge valuation.

So on a recharge of Rs 50 one will get a talktime of Rs 55; Rs 100 to give Rs 115 worth of talktime; Rs 175 talktime on Rs 150 recharge and so on.

Yasir Azman, circle business head, Karnataka, said, “We are most definitely the only mobile telephony provider in the state to offer most competitive pricing to our subscribers. Our business proposition has always been to offer seamless connectivity at exceptionally affordable price points and the Extra talk time offer is a step towards meeting that goal.”

Customers can avail this offer by walking into any of the 40 Uninor brand stores or 22,000 retail outlets spread across Karnataka.

A great deal of secrecy has been maintained by Reliance Industries about its 4G plans. But the director general of COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India) Rajan S Mathews has confirmed that Reliance is going ahead with plans to launch its network starting December this year.

Speaking to The Mobile Indian, Mathews said, “First BWA network roll-out will happen by December this year, with Reliance Industries taking the lead, followed by operators like Airtel and others who will launch the service by the first quarter of 2012 (December to March).”

He added, “The choice of technology is LTE, but with security clearance and lack of devices for LTE, the launch plans have not been announced so far. However, most of these issues have been resolved and the roll-outs will commence shortly.”

Both LTE and WiMax, called 4G or BWA technology, offer very high speed wireless Broadband access at theoretical speeds greater than 100 Mbps; while users can access real speeds of 10 Mbps on these networks. What is also good is the fact that LTE is backward compatible with both GSM and CDMA networks.

During the BWA (broadband wireless access) spectrum auction held in June this year, Infotel Broadband Services (now owned by Reliance Industries) won licenses for 22 circles while Aircel won eight, and Bharti Airtel and Qualcomm won four circles each, Tikona won five and Augere managed one.

So far no operator except Qualcomm (which is a technology vendor and participated only to ensure support for LTE technology) has made the choice of technology clear. However, LTE is clearly the more preferred of the two 4G technologies. WiMax is the other but it is losing out to LTE as some established WiMax players like Sprint in the USA are moving to LTE.