India’s GSM sector added 9.75 million new GSM connections in August 2009 compared to 9.47 million in July 2009. The total number of GSM connections in the country rose 2.99% to 335.45 million in August, compared to 325.7 million in July.

• RCOM has a total of 13.2 million GSM connections, and added 440,286 connections in the month.
• Additions by Bharti Airtel were stable at 2.8 million. It now has 107.99 million connections, and added the most number of connections among GSM operators.
• BSNL, which added 1.35 million GSM connections in August 2009 added 1.62 million in July. Total number of BSNLs GSM connections: 52.0 million.
• Idea Cellular added 1.5 million compared to 1.4 million in July. Total number of connections is 50.05 million, and it’s just 1,997,946 connections short of BSNLs connection base, and the number three GSM operator spot.
• New telco Loop added 66,909 connections compared to 44,897 in July, bringing its total userbase to 2.41 million.
• Aircel’s additions were stable at 1.3 million for August. It has 24.4 million users.
• MTNL added 20,150 connections, bringing its userbase to 4.3 million.
• Vodafone Essar added 2.1 million connections in July 2009 compared to 2.2 million in July.

Download the GSM Data from COAI here (XLS).

Note: This information is provided by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). We’re not aware of the telecom operators’ policy regarding incorporating churn. Secondly, we prefer to use the term ‘connections’ instead of ’subscribers’ since that it takes into account usage of multiple SIM usage in India, a trend that most telcos has acknowledged.