Indian mobile service providers collectively added 19.9 million new subscribers in the month of January, 2010 overtaking the 19.1 million mark achieved in December, 2009  at a sequential rise of 3.49%. The country’s wireless subscriber base at the end of January is 545 million subscribers.

India's tele-density is now at 49.50 with total subscriber base including wireless as well as fixedline at 581.81 million. 

Circle-wise Bihar recorded the highest number of new subscriber additions with 2.2 million additions followed by UP (E) with 1.8 million additions. Operators in UP (W) added one million subscribers.

Market share new wireless subscriber additions: Jan, 2010 

Company-wise, as reported earlier, TTSL notched the highest number of subscribers at 2.98 million followed by Bharti Airtel’s 2.85 million. Reliance Communications managed 2.8 million while BSNL added 2.2 million.

Wireless Subscriber Base market share: Jan, 2010

The fixedline subscriber base continued declining with 0.3 million surrenders in the month. The total subscriber base for fixedline services is 36.75 million. Among the private operators, Bharti Airtel managed the highest subscriber additions at 27,072 taking its subscriber base to 3.015 million followed by Tata Teleservices’ 17,526 and subscriber base of 1.12 million.

PSU MTNL witnessed the highest number of surrenders at 0.23 million. BSNL too saw declining base with 0.11 million of its fixedline subscribers surrendering but comparatively the figures are low.

Fixedline subscriber base market share: Jan, 2010

MTNL operates in Mumbai and New Delhi cities. It is the market leader for fixedline services in its areas of operations. A declining subscriber base however results in shrinking the addressable market for services such as broadband and IPTV delivered over the fixedline network. 

Broadband subscriber base increased from 7.83 million to 8.03 million.

source:telecomtiger