733 million GSM subscribers in India; Airtel leads with 28.41% market share

Bharti Airtel and Telewings Communications Services (Uninor) led subscriber additions in May, when the GSM base in the country grew marginally to 733 million with 6.19 million new mobile users, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said.There were 726.8 million GSM users at the end of April, the COAI said. Bharti Airtel, the country's largest operator, added the most users, with 1.65 million users joining its network. Its total number of subscribers stood at 208.2 million, with a market share of 28.41%, at the end of May.Uninor, controlled by Norwegian firm Telenor ASA, added 1.3 million subscribers to take its overall user base to 37.8 million. Telenor plans to take complete ownership of Uninor by buying Lakshdeep Investments and Finance's 26% stake for Rs.780 crore.Idea Cellular got 1.16 million new users to take its total to 137.7 million. The country's third-largest operator has a market share of 18.79%.Vodafone India, the second-largest player in the country, added 982,000 subscribers for a total of 168.2 million and a market share of 22.95%.Aircel added 942,000 subscribers to take its total user base to 72 million. Videocon Telecommunications added 127,000 users and state-run Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) added 11,702 users. The overall user base of Videocon and MTNL stood at 5.41 million and 3.26 million respectively.GSM refers to Global System for Mobile Communications, a digital cellular technology used for transmitting mobile voice and data services.

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