New Delhi, May 12: Post its shopping spree, Orange is set to emerge as thelargest cellular service operator in the country. The international telecommajor, which operates cellular services in Mumbai, is currently in theprocess of acquiring 49 per cent stake in Usha Martin (Calcutta) for Rs 640crore. It has already acquired a stake in Sterling Cellular (Delhi) and isalso planning to pick up stake in Fascel (Gujarat). Industry sources saythat Hutchison Telecom's gameplan is to eventually take majority share andmanagement control in all these companies. In any case, the goodies in theshopping bag of Hutchison, will add up to a massive number of 4,45,557subscribers, as per the March figures released by Cellular OperatorsAssociation of India (COAI).Hutchison Max (Mumbai) already has a subscriber base of 1,46,292. Postacquisitions, Essar is bringing with it 1,48,220 subscribers, Fascel willadd another 1,09,487 subscribers to the kitty and Usha Martin will beef upthe combined subscriber base by 41,558, should the deal go through.Even if the Usha Martin and Fascel acquisitions do not happen, Hutchisonstill has an impressive score of 2,94,512 subscribers in Delhi and Mumbai.Currently, it is the second largest cellular operator in the country, behindBPL, which according to the March figures has 3,41,412 subscribers.
However, with a post-acquisition score of nearly 4.5 lakh subscribers,Hutchison would be way ahead of BPL, which operates cellular services inMumbai (BPL Mobile), Tamil Nadu (BPL Cellular), Kerala (BPL Cellular), andMaharashtra (BPL Cellular).
Close on the tails of the two biggies, is the current number three, BhartiEnterprises, with its total of 2,82,918 subscribers in March.
Bharti Enterprises operates cellular services in Delhi (Bharti Cellular),Himachal Pradesh (Bharti Telenet), Andhra Pradesh (Bharti Mobile), andKarnataka (Bharti Mobile). Bharti, which in April became the first metrooperator in the country to cross 2 lakh subscribers is providing toughcompetition to the other two.
Fourth largest operator in the country is ModiCorp, which has also joinedthe elite club of companies to cross the two-lakh subscribers mark, saysDilip Modi, CEO, Spice Telecom. ModiCorp, which operates cellular servicesin Calcutta (Modi Telstra) and in Punjab and Karnataka (Spice Telecom) had acombined subscriber base of nearly 2,22,908 subscribers by the end of March.According to him, this figure has gone up to 2.5 lakh by the end of April.Spice Telecom has also become the first company in the `B' Circle to crossthe 1 lakh subscriber mark in Punjab, he adds.
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