Since March 31, 2004, as many as 184.84 lakh new connections were added, according to figures released by department of telecom said.
The growth in connections has pushed up the tele-density to 8.79 per cent in January from 7.0 per cent by the end of March 31, 2004.
Mobile phones accounted for the bulk of growth with the number of connections going up by 124.95 lakh since March 2004 to 386.50 lakh.
In the fixed line and WLL category, the growth was 5,989 lakh to 563.74 lakh. The number of mobile phones - including WLL (mobile) - stood at 498 lakh by the end of January this year.
The private sector accounted for 77.28 per cent of the expansion during the first ten months of 2004-05 fiscal.
"The private sector has provided 443.41 lakh phones as on January 31, 2005, which is 47 per cent of the total phones in the country," DoT said.
The waiting list for fixed line phones has come down by 0.32 lakh to 17.59 lakh. The PSUs have provided 4773 village public telephones in first ten months of this fiscal to take the total to 513576.
Optical fibre lines have been spread over 4,56,852 km till the end of January as against 4,45,822 km by end of March 2004.
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