The country’s mobile phone operators added 11.17 lakh subscribers in October, which is lowest in nine months despite the launching of 3G services by four leading operators in the month.
The total subscriber base of six operators stood at 11.17 crore at the end of October.
Despite the 3G service launch in October the subscriber growth rate is slow because of lack availability of the service in different areas, said officials of different mobile companies.
Although many areas had been brought under the 3G service by November, the market penetration is still slow, they said.
The leading mobile phone operators GP added more than 6 lakh subscribers in October taking its total base to 4.66 crore from 4.60 crore in September.
Banglalink added 2 lakh new subscribers in October taking the total subscriber base to 2.83 crore from previous month’s 2.81 crore.
Robi’s subscriber number remained unchanged in October to 2.48 crore after the company had lost 1.67 lakh subscribers in September.
Citycell, the only CDMA operator, broke its year-long downtrend in October by adding 14,000 new subscribers in the month. The total subscriber of Citycell reached to 1.34 lakh from previous month’s 1.33 lakh.
Airtel added 1.96 lakh new subscribers in October taking its total subscriber base to 8.2 lakh.
State-owned Teletalk failed to acquire any new subscriber in October as its total subscriber base stood at 2.34 lakh, the same as September. In September,
Teletalk had added 22,000 new subscribers.
Officials of the mobile companies said the customers were enthusiastic about the newly-launched 3G service but as it could not be delivered nationwide, the growth rate slowed down in October.
The companies witnessed a sharp fall in the business for three months from October 2012 after the government had imposed a number of new rules regarding subscriber identity module (SIM) registration.
The six companies added 1.2 lakh new subscribers in January after losing 13 lakh subscribers in the previous three months. They added 24 lakh subscribers in August.
-With New Age input
