India’s mobile base to be second-largest

Country will overtake US in terms of wireless subscribers in April 

NEW DELHI: It’s official now. India is about to become the second-largest country in terms of number of mobile phone users. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has projected that in April India will be number two in the world, after China, if you count the wireless subscribers.

India is all set to beat the US, to become the second largest. Also in April, India is set to cross the 300 million mark for total number of phone subscribers (wireless and fixed phones).

As of end-February 2008, India had 250.93 million mobile phone subscribers, and the country is adding between 8 million and 9 million new users every month.

The US, as on last count, had 256 million mobile users, and it is adding only between 2 million and 3 million subscribers every month, according to CTIA (an association of wireless operators in America).
 
China had 534.58 million wireless subscribers in January 2008, and the projection for February was 540.50 million for the country. China has been adding 6 million to 7 million wireless users on an average every month.

India’s teledensity stood at 25% at the end of February, against 24.63% in the previous month. While the wireless subscriber base grew by 8.53 million in February, the wireline users showed a slight dip again. From 39.22 million wireline users in January 2008, the number fell to 39.18 million in February.

As for the total number of phone connections, India had 290.11 million as of February-end, against 281.62 million in January.

The telecom regulator has projected that some time in April, India would cross the 300 million mark.

The government had earlier targeted 250 million phone connections in India by the end 2007, but the country achieved the number much ahead of the deadline. The next target for India is 500 million phone connections by the year 2010.

m_nivedita@dnaindia.net