India registered the highest-ever net adds of 17.6mn subs in November 2009, up 6% month over month (MoM) and 71% year over year (YoY). We attribute this surge against average net adds of 14mn YTD to all operators launching innovative plans, especially the pay per second plan started by Tata and later launched by most operators at the end of October.
Bharti’s net adds rose 4% MoM to 2.8mn with 22.9% wireless market share. RCOM’s wireless net adds rose 30% MoM to 2.8mn subs. Tata Teleservices, which earlier launched its GSM operations with pay-per-use and pay-per-second plans, added 3.3mn subs. Vodafone added strong net adds of 2.8mn in Nov09. For the second consecutive month, Idea’s net adds rose ~30% to a strong 1.9mn.
Revenue Market Share Is Key:Bharti further consolidated its leadership position, and we estimate the company improved its wireless revenue market share by 62bp to 30.3% while largely maintaining its wireless market share of 24%, thereby enhancing the gap between revenue and wireless market share to 5.7%. We estimate that Tata increased its revenue market share by 59bp to 7.2%, but this still lags its wireless market share of 18.6%.
