India’s GSM net adds continued to decline in August to 5.3m, a staggering decline of 30% from 7.6m in July, according to data from COAI. August compares worse than the 9.7m monthly net add rate in the quarter to June, which for the GSM market was 32% lower vs. Q4. August net adds were merely 55% of the average monthly net adds in the quarter ending June.
[Numbers Exclude Reliance & Tata which are out of COAI]
Bharti and Vodafone saw their monthly net adds decline 24% each following 29%M/M (each) decline in July and 28%/33% decrease in the quarter to June vs. the previous quarter. BSNL, another large player, experienced 78% decline in net adds.
Idea’s monthly net additions have jumped by >2x mom to 2.3m in August. Its monthly net additions are just 10% lower than 4QFY11 levels. We believe the surge in Idea’s net adds may be driven by: (1) increase in active additions (resumption in expansion capex) and; (2) a possible easing of the company’s subscriber recognition policy. Notably, the ratio of active-to-total subscriber base for Idea steadily increased from 90.3% in Jan ’11 to 93.3% in Jul ’11
Grouping Uninor, Videocon, S Tel and Etisalat as the “new” players, their cumulative net adds were negative at 0.3m due to decline of 0.6m subscribers for Videocon. They accounted for -6% of GSM net adds.
The Total GSM Mobile SIM Subscriber Base stands at 611 Mn at end of August 2011 excluding Reliance GSM & Tata DoCoMo.
Also note that large part of the decline in subscriber adds last month was driven by slower net adds in B and C circles, the decline this month was led by sharp falls in both metros and C circles. Additions in metros have fallen to 0.4mn from the run-rate of 1.2mn/month in H1CY11, while that in C circles to 0.6mn from ~2mn during this period.
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