2	Top, wireless, operators, India, subscribers

A total of 391.76 wireless subscribers were split between 12 wireless telecom operators. Bharti Airtel lead the way with 93.92 million followed by Reliance (GSM + CDMA). Sistema which launched its services few months back has 0.39 million subscribers (3.9 lakh).

Top 12 Wireless Operators in the country :

 Market share of top 12 operators :

Of the 391.76 wireless subscribers GSM has a market share of 76% and here is how they are split :

Reliance has registered a 6.73 % market share which is quite impressive for service which was launched only 6 months ago.

CDMA subscribers are at 94.5 million and here is how they are split :

Tata Teleservices which launched its GSM operations under brand name Tata DoCoMo will be another player to look out for in this next few quarters. Swan Telecom and Unitech Wireless are 2 other operators which are gearing up for a launch.

Reliance rules CDMA followed by Tata Teleservices (Tata Indicom). Shyam telelink is now rebranding to MTS India. CDMA doesn’t look as much over-crowded as GSM but when put together the overall picture of Indian telecom looks crowded with 12 operators and 3 waiting in the wings. Reliance and Tata are the 2 companies to watch out for with the dual play of GSM and CDMA operations.

The average revenue per user of CDMA is 99 rupees and that of GSM is 205 rupees. With 3 new players coming in for GSM the ARPU’s will come down. CDMA which is supposed to be a better network for data access can use this opportunity to increase the ARPU’s and subscribers. It just have to sort out the handset availability issue.

Source : TRAI