India's telecom customer base is slowly inching towards the 10-crore (100 million) mark.
The country's telecom user base touched 9.29 crore (92.9 million) till December 2004, taking the country's tele-density to 8.59 per cent, with an addition of a whopping 1.64 crore (16.4 million) telephones during April-December period of the current fiscal.
The month of December alone saw as many as 23 lakh (2.3 million) phones being added, figures released by the Department of Telecom said on Tuesday.
With CDMA mobile customers base touching the one-crore mark, the mobile subscriber base (both GSM and CDMA) reached 4.9 crore (Rs 49 million) by the end of January with the net addition of 1.766 million users in the month.
The rate of mobile addition has, however, slowed down compared to December when there was about 1.912 million new additions.
In the CDMA category, the total subscriber base stood at 1.04 crore (10.4 million), adding about 496,000 customers, according to Association of Unified Service Providers of India's latest figures.
In December, CDMA players had added 512,000 new users. GSM-based cellular subscriber base increased by 1.27 million in January compared to 1.4 million in December, taking the total subscriber base to 3.86 crore (38.6 million), according to the Cellular Association of India.
Capturing a market share of 26.50 per cent, Bharti touched a cellular subscriber figure of 1.02 crore (10.2 million) in January, adding 350,000 customers in the month.
In December, it had added about 410,000 subscribers.
State-owned BSNL added 136,000 new users taking its overall subscriber base to 86.73 lakh (8.673 million) and a market-share of 22.44 per cent. In December, BSNL had added about 286,000 customers.
Hutch added 252,000 customers in January with a customer base of 74.31 lakh (7.431 million) against an addition of 328,000 subscribers in December. It had a market-share of 19.23 per cent in Januray.
In CDMA segment, Reliance added 374,000 subscribers in the month taking the total number to 94.90 lakh (9.49 million).
Tatas added 120,000 customers taking the total subscriber base to 926,000 in January.
HFCL added 1,300 mobile subscribers in January at 49,896, while Shyam Telelink lost about 277 subscribers to have a base of 25,388.
In the GSM segment, MTNL's subscriber figure stood at 680,000 in January with a marketshare of 1.78 per cent. It operates in Mumbai and Delhi.
Idea touched 48.79 lakh (4.879 million) subscribers and enjoys a market-share of 12.63 per cent.
MTNL lost 20,354 wireline subscribers in January to touch a base of 40.61 lakh (4.061 million), while on WLL, it added 6,689 subscribers to touch 188,000. Equivalent figures of BSNL were not available.
The private sector telecom firms continue to play a major role by accounting for 7 per cent of the expansion during these nine months. The private sector has so far provided 4.26 crore (42.6 million) phones as on December 31, 2004, which is about 46 per cent of the total number of phones in India.
However, in rural telephony, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is the major contributor. In the rural areas, only BSNL has provided direct exchange lines and VPTs (village panchayat telephones).
As against 473,000 additional telephones provided in rural areas during April-December 2003, BSNL has provided 765,000 telephones during the current year.
As many as 3,138 VPTs have also been provided by BSNL during the past nine months.
