Six million new subscribers in August, Govt

New Delhi, Sep 15 (UNI) The government today said the month of August saw a net addition of six million phones with the entire growth in the wireless segment.

The strong rising trend in the number of new telecom subscribers continued in the month of August with a net addition of over six million phones - an average daily addition of 1.9 lakh lines.

As a result, the total number of telephones in the country crossed 164 million, as against a total of 158.05 million as on July 31, 2006, a growth of 3.8 per cent. The growth in August 2006 was 48 per cent over that of August 2005. Almost the entire growth registered was in the wireless segment - with GSM contributing 4.53 million and CDMA contributing 1.7 million, respectively. There was a decline in the fixed line segment, reducing the number of subscribers by 0.2 million.

The overall teledensity improved further to 14.6 per cent in August 2006 from 14.10 per cent in July 2006 and from 9.98 per cent as on August 31, 2005. U P(E) and U P (W) telecom circles recorded the highest growth rate (15 per cent and 12.6 per cent respectively) in the GSM segment. In the CDMA segment, the total subscriber base registered a growth of five per cent with a net addition of 1.7 million subscribers. Andhra Pradesh and U P(East) telecom circles contributed the maximum to this addition. U P (East) alone added eight lakh subscribers during the month.

The growth of broadband connections improved further and at the end of July 2006, over 1.64 million broadband connections were provided and coverage of broadband connectivity by public sector service providers has reached 487 cities (as on August 31, 2006).

Further, the total number of existing ISP licencees is 404.

Under Bharat Nirman Programme, of the 66,822 villages remaining to be covered on November 2004, a total of 29173 Village Public Telephones (VPTs) have been provided. The remaining 37649 villages having more than 100 population and not lying in thick forest area etc, are yet to be covered.

UNI RT SRS DB2022