India's Reliance Communications has de-activated 5.6 million subscribers in March 2007.

Mandatory subscriber verification norms and resulting deactivation of connections have rejigged market share of telecom operators, hitting Reliance Communications (RCOM) the most. An analysis of the latest data on mobile subscriber base in the country shows that the verification process has also led to a change in India’s GSM:CDMA ratio, making it more skewed in favour of the GSM platform. RCom, India’s second largest private operator, saw the market share going down to 18% from 20.5% as it de-activated 5.6 million subscribers in March.

The deadline for subscriber verification was March 31, 2007, and the recognition of an unverified customer after this deadline would attract a fine of Rs 1,000. Those users who could not be verified were disconnected by telcos. As a result, RCOM reported a subscriber base of over 28 million as of March 2007, 10.6% lower than the previous month’s number. Its CDMA business was the worst affected, depicting a fall of 13% in subscriber base at 24.6 million. RCOM’s GSM user base rose 5.8% to 4.1 million in March.

RCOM was the only mobile services provider among the top five who suffered a drop in the market share. With this, the share of CDMA connections in total mobile subscribers as of March fell to 26.7% from 29.2% a month ago. This implies that less than 27% of users are now on CDMA compared to almost 30% earlier. The total mobile subscriber base in the country rose 2% to 161m in March. The outcome of this was that BSNL has grapped the number two position in the Indian wireless space.