The country’s operators dished out more than 262 million cell phone connections in 2010, taking the total number of mobile subscriptions to more than 752 million, but only 70% of these are active customers. New telcos such as Etisalat DB, STel, HFCL, Videocon, Uninor, Tata DoCoMo (GSM) and Sistema Shyam have less than 50% active customers, in sharp contrast to the national average of 70%.
Bharti Airtel had about 92% active customers, while Idea Cellular had a little over 90% followed by Vodafone Essar at 76%, compared to 47-50% for Tata (GSM and CDMA) and 66-68% for Reliance Communications.
