This is as good as it gets. The country?s mobile telephony created another record on Friday with the GSM-based operators adding 7.6 million users in March. This, the Cellular Operators? Association of India (COAI) said, is the highest addition in a month since GSM rollout in 1995.

Together with CDMA, new connections in March would number over 9 million, a steep rise from the average 7-8 million a month. With the March additions, India can boast of the second largest wireless network in the world, with a subscriber base of 300 million, next only to China and ahead of the US.

Last month Trai had projected that India would surpass the US to become the second largest wireless network with a subscriber base of over 300 million by April. But it has reached that status a month ahead.

The total GSM user base has reached 192.3 million at end-March, up from 185 million in February, a growth of about 4%.

According to COAI figures, Bharti Airtel has the highest market share of 32.2% with 2.3 million subscriber additions during the month, taking its total subscriber base to over 61 million. Vodafone-Essar followed with a 23.2% market share and an addition of over 15 million, claiming a cumulative subscriber base of 44 million. State-owned BSNL held a market share of 18.82% and added over 7 million customers to its network, reaching a total of 36 million subscribers, while MTNL added close to 120,000 new subscribers and expanded its user base to 3.5 million.

Smaller towns are fuelling growth in mobile telephony.