India Bharti Airtel Adds 1.7 Million Mobile Subscribers In March

NEW DELHI -(Dow Jones)- India's largest telecommunications operator by number of subscribers Bharti Airtel has added 1.70 million mobile phone subscribers in March, industry data showed Wednesday.

With this, Bharti's mobile phone subscriber base has reached 37.14 million users, data released by the Cellular Operators Association of India, the body representing all the nine mobile operators using GSM technology, showed.

State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. added the largest number of mobile phone subscribers in March at 1.98 million to take its total subscriber base to 27.43 million.

Hutchison Essar Ltd., in which U.K.'s Vodafone Group recently bought a 52% direct stake, reported an addition of 1.1 million mobile phone users to take its total subscriber base to 26.44 million users at the end of March.

Recently listed Idea Cellular showed a slowdown in growth by adding 370,551 subscribers in March against 568,051 mobile phone users added in February.

The statement didn't give reasons for the slow growth.

Idea's subscriber base at the end of March was 14.01 million cell phone users.

Mahanagar Telephone Nigam, another state-run telecommunications company providing services in New Delhi and Mumbai, added 167,992 mobile phone users to take its subscriber base at the end of March to 2.75 million.

All the nine operators using GSM technology put together a reported addition of 6.13 million mobile phone users in March, with the total subscriber base at 121.43 million GSM mobile phone users.

-By Shaleen Agrawal, Dow Jones Newswires; 91-11-23074020; shaleen.agrawal@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires"

Posted to the site on 11th April 2007