On the Road to Rapid Growth

Uninor seems to be on the roads on providing one of the best services in the country as the telecom operator has outperformed the bigwigs of the industry by the maximum number of subscriber additions of 2.67 mn in the month of October. With addition of 2.67 mn subscribers, the net subscriber base of Uninor surged to 32.32 mn.

Meanwhile, the net GSM subscribers in India crossed 625.4 mn in October
as compared to 618.28 mn in the previous month, says the data released by the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).

Second on the subscribers' addition chart is Idea Cellular, which added more than 1.64 mn subscribers that has taken its net numbers to 101.82 mn. The operator has got a market share
of 16.28%.

Bharti airtel has added 949,819 customers, witnessing growth of 0.55% as compared to the previous month, to have net total of 173.73 mn subscribers. It has got a market share of 27.78%.

Uninor, a new entrant in the Indian mobile service market, is fast adding up its subscribers and moving ahead. It is indeed competing hard. In December 2009 when it started operations, Uninor had only 1.2 mn subscribers in around
8 circles. That number went up to
5.2 mn in 21 circles as in April 2010 and today it takes the pride of having net 32.32 mn subscribers.

The GSM service provider that is the result of a joint venture of real estate major, Unitech and Norway based Telenor Group has emerged as the most promising entrant with it quality of service, innovative tarrif plans targeted approach of having the direct relationship with
the distributors.

With pure focus on prepaid mobile connections, Uninor is wooing customers with its '24x7 Badalta Discount Plan' or dynamic pricing plan that offers call discounts from 5% to 60%. However this innovative concept has been backed by an intelligent 'discount engine'
that hinges purely on IT systems and billing applications.

Uninor has taken over its competing companies who got licences along with it and crossed subcriber base of state-run firm MTNL. The other 5 operators that lagged behind Uninor in April are CDMA player MTS, GSM operators Videocon, Loop, S Tel, and Etisalat DB. At present, its services are commercially available in the 13 circles of UP (West), UP (East), Bihar, Orissa, Kolkata, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Mumbai, Maharashtra, and Gujarat.

Of the total 6 operators who were granted licence in 2008, Uninor is the first operator to reach the 25 mn subsriber base and has a market share of 5.17%. MTS is the second operator after Uninor to reach the 10 mn subscriber base. Videocon that launched its mobile telephone services in March 2010 has a market share of 1.7% and covers a subscriber base of 6 mn. Loop Mobile that has a market share of 0.54% has a subscriber base of 3.2 million. S Tel has a market share of 0.45% with a subscriber base of 3,541,298 while Etisalat has a market share of 0.08% with a subscriber base of 1,566,266.

Hence, looking at the overall growth of the brand and its such rapid recognition by both consumers and competition it seems to be a brand that is here to stay.