GSM party continues to rock in India as they collectively added 5.9 million subscribers in Feb-08 taking the total tally to 184.67 million [excludes Reliance Communications subscribers]
Bharti Airtel continued to gain market share with addition of 2.3 mn subs. The company had an impressiveGSM net adds’ market share of 38%. Bharti is likely to have 23.8% market share of overall wireless market.
Vodafone India arrested its 6 month MoM declining trend graph and added 1.4 mn subscribers. The decline was largely due to problems in the circles of Delhi and U.P(E).
Idea cellular recorded its highest ever net adds of 919K followed by BSNL with 824K.
Metro growth continues to slow down with only 2.3% MoM growth in subscribers. Growth of “B” circles at 3.6% MoM finally overtook growth of “A” circles at 3.1% MoM. “C” circles are the winners with 4.4% MoM growth.
What does Higher Subscriber Numbers Mean ?
For sure it does mean falling ARPU and hence mild shock on the bottomline.
However, I have noticed an interesting promotion from Vodafone in the pre-paid segment. They introduced a Rs 105 full value talk time recharge. After a month it was bumped up to Rs 120 and the last time I inquired about it, it had reached Rs 130. This essentially means the company is trying hard to bump up the customer’s re-charge value. The trend seems to be continuing since the sales of those pre-paid cards hasn’t been disappointing 🙂