India is expected to have 100 million GSM (global system for mobile communications) customers by 2007-08 compared to 26 million subscribers as on March 2004, according to the Global Mobile Suppliers Association.

"For GSM, India is a success story. It is one of the fastest growing markets with its subscriber base doubling in 2003. At this pace, the target of 100 million subscribers by 2007-2008 is definitely achievable," Alan Hadden, president of GSA, said at a news conference in New Delhi.

Globally, the GSM market reached 1 billion users in February 2004, he said, adding GSM accounted for 80 per cent of the new subscriber growth in 2003.

"Almost every Latin American operator has chosen GSM. In North America GSM growth is bigger than CDMA (code division multiple access)," he said.

Commenting on the raging debate over GSM versus CDMA in mobile services arena, Hadden said: "GSM is the world's most successful mobile standard with over 1 billion users, and is an open mobile standard. It also supports automatic international roaming, which is a major contributor to business plans."