Broadband India

8.2 Mn Subscribers Added in April

India added 8.22 mln mobile users in April, after overtaking US to become the world’s second largest wireless market in India. Start-up spectrum in some various circles was also allocated to new Telecom operators who are starting to operations to sell-out after a while [Unitech and Videocon] Here is the break-up of market share of various cellular service providers [End of April-2008] in India and their ARPU / Month in INR,

• Aircel 10.99 mln NA
• Bharti Airtel 64.37 mln Rs 357
• BPL 1.31 mln Rs 350-375
• BSNL 36.68 mln Rs 244 [ARPU seems to be very low, not sure why, I'll get to the bottom of this]
• Idea Cellular 25.04 mln Rs 283
• MTNL 3.24 mln Rs 196
• Reliance Comm [GSM+ CDMA] 47.45 mln Rs 317
• Tata Indicom Teleservices 24.77 mln NA
• Spice Telecom 4.36 mln Rs 314
• Vodafone Essar 45.78 mln NA

The Telecom Minister recently said issues regarding 3G licenses will be sorted out and issued soon so that service providers can start service by Jan-09. This is the price we pay to live in democracy like India where Minister’s have the ultimate authority discouraging engineers and scientists views.