Indian mobile operators collectively added 16.30 million new subscribers in the month of May 2010 taking the overall wireless subscriber base in the country to 617.53 million.

Bharti Airtel added the highest number of new subscribers with 3 million additions followed by fierce competitor Reliance Communications with 2.8 million new subscribers. Vodafone Essar added 2.5 million new subscribers while Tata Teleservices added 2.3 million subscribers.

Aircel added 1.6 million subscribers, Idea Cellular 1.4 million and BSNL about 1 million.

New entrant Unitech witnessed a drop in subscriber base by 8,722. Videocon added 0.7 million new subscribers.

The fixedline subscriber base continued downward trend to reach 36.39 million while the broadband subscriber base increased to 9.24 million.

At the end of May 2010, India’s total subscribe base reached 653.92 million with a tele-density of 55.38.