The telecom sector had witnessed a bumper period till recently. Most of the gains seen by the companies were driven by the increasing subscriber base. But in recent times this growth seems to be fading away. The total number of subscribers (for GSM only) has been declining in recent months. In the month of December 2012, total subscriber base declined by 6.6 m. One reason behind this decline is market saturation as penetration rates have crossed 70%. But the bigger reason for the decline is people discontinuing the practice of keeping multiple connections. As tariffs have reached rock bottom, most operators have cut back on offering freebies along with new connections. As free minutes and other such goodies have been cut down, subscribers prefer to cut back on the number of connections that they have.