Broadband connectivity to villages has been lagging, with delay in laying of an optical fibre network up to gram panchayats
Union Minister of State for Communication Sachin Pilot on Thursday said that efforts are on to increase the teledensity in the country to 40 per cent by 2014.
In order to increase teledensity, particularly in the rural areas, the telecom ministry is planning to put in place common facility, like towers, which could be shared by private players, Union Minister for Telecommunications and IT, Dayanidhi Maran
Telecom service providers and the Maha Kumbh Mela administration are on their toes to ensure smooth connectivity at the grand event set to witness record teledensity.
India's telecom services would continue to record a strong growth with teledensity more than doubling to 18 per cent in the next five years
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Monday proposed a Rs 8,000 crore (Rs 80 billion) subsidy for creating necessary infrastructure in rural areas to take the tele-density there from the current below two per cent to 15 per cent by 2007.
The development marks a watershed moment in India's telecom history since fixed-line or landline connections formed the final segment where a State-owned operator was in the top spot.
From a teledensity (number of phones in use for every 100 individuals) of just 1.4 per cent in 1995, India today has reached a teledensity of over 50 per cent, with big cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, etc going up to 130-140 per cent, same as in Europe and North America.
Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal asked private telecom operators to replicate the success story of telecom revolution -- witnessed in urban India-- in rural areas as well.
India may have achieved a teledensity of over 65 per cent, but as many as 62,443 villages are still to get a taste of telecom revolution that started since 1995-96, says the Economic Survey 2010-11.
The number of telephone subscribers in India increased from 1,183.15 million at the end of May to 1,186.63 million at the end of June.
The government on Monday urged private operators to play a big role in providing rural telephony across the country to reach a respectable level of teledensity.
India's teledensity touched 8.20 per cent by the end of October with total number of phone connections touching 8.86 crore (88.6 million), department of telecom said.
Indian telecom sector has registered a phenomenal growth and has become second largest telephone network in the world after China.
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The infrastructure sector received a huge facelift in the last nine years with improvement in road and railway networks, power generation and teledensity, among others, says the UPA government's report card.
Led by Bharti Airtel, telecom operators added 4.73 million new mobile phone users in the month of June 2012, taking the telephone subscriber base in the country to 965.52 million, telecom regulator Trai on Friday said.
Indian Telecommunications network is the third-largest in the world and the second-largest among the emerging economies of Asia.
Everyone in urban India has, on an average, a mobile connection.
Citing statistics of teledensity which has gone up from seven per cent in March 2004 to 66 per cent in December, 2010, Singh said the policy has paid 'rich dividends'.
Telecom operators added 13.35 million mobile subscribers in May 2011, taking the total number of telephone users in the country to 874.68 million, sectoral regulator Trai said.
According to data released by the telecom regulator, the wireless subscriber base increased from 601.22 million in April to 617.53 million by the end of May 2010, registering a growth of 2.71 per cent.
The wireless subscriber base has increased to 93.02 crore.
Reliance Telecom Ltd (RTL) has dissociated itself from the GSM lobby's stance on spectrum, stating there is no merit in the demand for additional spectrum.
The total number of telephone connections in the country has increased to 176.5 million with the addition of more than six million new users in October.
India has achieved a teledensity of 9.6 per cent at the end of July this year with a net addition of 76 lakh new telephone connection during April-July period of 2005.
With over 21 lakh new telephone subscribers added in the month of February, the teledensity has improved to 8.98 per cent, up from seven per cent at the end of March 2004.
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