Monday, February 23, 2009

India adds record 15.41 mobile million users in January


India, the world's fastest-expanding mobile market, added 15.41 million wireless users last month -- the biggest monthly growth ever, according to government data Saturday. India's number of wireless subscribers grew by 15.41 million in January after swelling by 10.81 million in December.

January's increase was a record for monthly wireless subscriber growth, according to figures from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) posted on its website.

The total number of wireless connections stood in January at 362.30 million, up from 233.63 million in the same month a year earlier.

Combined with fixed line users, the country of 1.1 billion people now has over 400 million telephone connections.

The country's blistering mobile phone customer growth has been helped by one of the world's lowest cellular phone tariff structures of less than two cents a minute.

India's "mobile revolution" is mainly confined to the cities, but the real prize for phone companies is the vast rural market, where nearly 70 percent of the population live, analysts say.

The country's teledensity -- the number of people owning a telephone out of every 100 people -- stood at 34.50 by end-January, Trai said, meaning there is still a huge untapped market for connections.

This is in contrast to such regions as Europe and North America where the mobile market is saturated, analysts say.

Twelve years ago, teledensity was around three per every one hundred people while in 2005 it stood at just 11.

In the wireless segment, Reliance Communications, India's second-largest mobile company by users, registered the highest growth rate in January at 8.1 percent, adding 4.95 million users, bringing its subscriber base to 66.29 million.

The jump in Reliance customers came after the company began offering global system for mobile communications or GSM technology as well as discounts to new clients.

Others such as Bharti Airtel, the country's top mobile company, and Vodafone Essar, controlled by Britain's Vodafone, registered between 3-4 percent of growth in January.

Global consultancy Gartner forecasts India's mobile phone owners will total 737 million by 2012.

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