Telecom subscriber base grows by 49% in September

New Delhi, Oct 17 (UNI) The government today said that strong trend in the number of new telecom subscribers continued in the month of September with a net addition of 5.9 million phones, an average daily addition of 1.9 lakh lines and 49.9 per cent increase over that of September 2005.

As a result, the total number of telephones in the country touched 170 million, as against a total of 164.1 million as on August 31, 2006, a growth of 3.6 per cent.

Almost the entire growth registered was in the wireless segment, with GSM contributing 4.39 million and CDMA contributing 1.7 million, respectively.

However, there was a decline in the fixed line segment, reducing the number of subscribers by 0.1 million.

The overall teledensity improved to 15.1 per cent in September 2006 from 14.62 per cent in August 2006 and from 10.24 per cent as on September 30, 2005.

Madhya Pradesh telecom circle recorded the highest growth rate of 9.56 per cent in the GSM segment. In the CDMA segment, the total subscriber base registered a growth of 4.6 per cent with a net addition of 1.7 million subscribers.

Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh telecom circles contributed the maximum to this addition. Andhra Pradesh alone added more than 5 lakh subscribers during the month.

The growth of broadband connections improved further and at the end of August 2006, over 1.7 million broadband connections were provided and coverage of broadband connectivity by public sector service providers has reached 487 cities.

Under the Bharat Nirman Programme, of the 66,822 villages remaining to be covered on November 2004, a total of 30251 Village Public Telephones (VPTs) have been provided. The remaining 36571 villages having more than 100 population and not lying in thick forest area are to be covered by November 2007.

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