COAI Data: Bharti Airtel continues to hold the top position

According to the data released by Cellular Operators Association Of India (COAI), amongst all telecom companies, Bharti Airtel Ltd continues to hold the top position, with 29.50 percent market share, adding another 15,02,755 subscribers during January, to take its total subscriber base to 291.61 million subscribers.

The data says Airtel is closely followed by Vodafone India Ltd, which ended January with 213.81 million subscribers, while Idea Cellular Ltd stood at 197.64 million subscribers at the end of the first month of the year.

Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI, said, "The increased numbers are a glimmer of hope for the sector, which is going through one of its darkest phases due to hyper-competition and poor financial health. All the operators have significantly expanded their services across the country, and have begun heavily diversifying their services beyond voice & data for the consumer. The industry has ensured that Government's Digital India programme reaches the farthest corners of the country and everyone reaps the benefit of new communication technologies."

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"Our member operators have made a further commitment to invest another Rs 74,000 crores in their recent meeting at the DoT, for enhanced consumer experience and seamless connectivity. However, Right of Way (RoW) and myths around EMF continue to remain the impediment for the industry for accessing current sites. We urge the government and our citizens to help us, serve them better," he further added.

The data which also provides mobile subscriber numbers for individual circles showed that the UP (East) circle remained at the top with a total of 85.58 million subscribers, while Maharashtra remained at second position with a total of 81.56 million mobile subscribers.

Meanwhile, COAI said India's private telecom service providers have a total of 988.49 million subscribers.