BANGALORE, INDIA: Reliance Communications, one of India's largest telecom operator offering nationwide CDMA and GSM mobile services, announced that it achieved 5 million new wireless subscribers on its network during January 2009.

With this, Reliance Communications became world's first (except China) to add 5 million new subscribers in a span of 30 days, on its fully-IP enabled, next generation wireless network.

The entry of Reliance Mobile in the GSM segment had once again led to a significant expansion of the market, with the company seeing a significant 285 percent rise in new subscriber additions, within the first month of its nationwide GSM rollout.

S P Shukla, president - personal business, Reliance Communications, said: "We continue to experience acceleration in the growth momentum as we keep launching our GSM services in new geographies and offering a slew of attractive recharge options to further enhance our already superior customer offerings. A response of such magnitude makes us confident of setting new benchmarks in customer service in the months to come."

Reliance Mobile announced the launch of its GSM services in January 2009 and rolled out its services in 11000 towns and 3 lakh villages in a phased manner during the course of the month. The company added another 3000 towns taking its GSM network to over 14,000 towns and 4 lakh villages and was on course to take its dual network - CDMA and GSM- coverage to 24000 towns and 6 lakh villages.