Tata Teleservices Tops Indian Wireless Subscriber Growth in August

­India's telecoms regulator, TRAI has announced that the number of telephone subscribers in India increased to 494.07 million at the end of August, from 479.07 million in July, thereby registering a growth rate of 3.13%. With this, the overall tele-density in India reached 42.27%.

Wireless subscriber base increased from 441.66 million in July 2009 to 456.74 million at the end of August at a monthly growth rate of 3.42%. Wireless tele-density stands at 39.08. The fastest growing network in the month was Tata Teleservices.

Tata Teleservices recently launched its GSM services under the brand name Tata DoCoMo and has so far started commercial operations in eight Circles. "It has been just over two months that we launched Tata DoCoMo GSM services, and it will be a few months before we are a pan-India GSM operator. Against that backdrop, it is extremely gratifying to emerge as the top grosser in the industry in terms of new subscriber additions in August," Mr Anil Sardana, Managing Director of Tata Teleservices, said.

Wireline subscriber base declined from 37.41 million in July-2009 to 37.33 million at the end of August-09. BSNL/MTNL, the PSU operators own 85.80% of the Market share. While major Private wireline service providers have increased their subscriber base, BSNL/MTNL lost 0.14 million subscribers in the month of August-09. Wireline tele-density is 3.19.

Article published on 24th September 2009