According to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), the GSM subscriber base in rural areas witnessed an addition of 3.88 million users during April 2015. The overall rural customer base grew by 1.15 per cent from 337.65 million as of end-March 2015 to 341.53 million as of end-April 2015.

Bharti Airtel added the maximum number of rural subscribers (1.30 million) in April 2015, followed by Idea Cellular with 1.21 million subscriber additions. Meanwhile, Vodafone India added 0.84 million rural subscribers during the same period. Bharti Airtel also had the largest rural subscriber base of 108.91 million subscribers, as of end-April 2015.

Among the circles, Bihar witnessed maximum number of rural subscribers additions at 0.62 million while Uttar Pradesh (East) remained the largest circle in terms of total base with 36.14 million rural connections.