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Our Bureau

New Delhi , April 7

HERE'S a shocker. Even as the entire world is harping on the booming cellular market in the country, the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) based mobile user base dipped by over 5 lakh subscribers in March.

The total subscriber base has decreased from 11 million in February to 10.5 million in March. This is the first time that the operators have reported a decline in the subscriber base.

The slide in subscriber base has been on account of nearly 9.8 lakh disconnections reported by Reliance Infocomm on account of `customer credit worthiness' and subscriber data verification. The disconnections nullified the impact of 3.7 lakh new subscribers added by the company in March. With this Reliance's subscriber base stands at 10.3 million including 1 million GSM subscribers.

Bharti with 10.6 million cellular subscribers as on February is now the market leader.

The Global System for Mobile (GSM) based cellular operators will release their subscriber numbers in a day or two. The two technologies have been adding nearly 2 million subscribers every month for the last one year with GSM accounting for the majority of the additions.

Reliance also reported a dip in its Wireless in Local Loop fixed (WLL-F) subscribers by 84,003. In effect, Reliance's subscriber base dipped by 6.06 lakh in one month. The company had shown an increase of 4.4 lakh subscribers in February.

Other CDMA operators reported sluggish growth. Tata Teleservices added only 10,415 mobile subscribers during the month while its fixed wireless subscriber base increased by 1.8 lakh users. Tata Teleservices added a total of 1.98 lakh subscribers in March compared to 3.68 lakh in the previous month.

Mr S.C. Khanna, General Secretary, Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India, said that this was a one-time aberration due to corrections undertaken by a company.

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