15.26 million connections added In January 2009

In another indicator that the economic gloom may be lifting in India, the telecom sector registered its sharpest monthly growth ever in terms of the number of new subscribers added. In fact, the 15.26 million additional subscribers in January represent a quantum jump over the 10.66 million added in December 2008. A TRAI press release announcing these figures said the growth had come mainly from the wireless segment, which added 15.41 million subscribers in January. In contrast, the wireline segment actually saw a decline in the number of connections by 1.48 lakh subscribers to 3.78 crore in January 2009 from 3.79 crore last December. With this, the total number of telephone connections in India crossed the 400 million mark at the end of January, reaching 400.05 million compared to 384.79 million at the end of December. In the process, overall tele-density was pushed up to 34.5% from 33.2% in December. There are over 400 million phone connections in India now—an overwhelming majority of which is on wireless network, with subscribers in the GSM, CDMA and WLL segments adding up to 362.30 million at the end of January. In the wireless segment, RCom registered the highest growth rate in January at 8.1% followed by Idea at 5.4%, Aircel at 4.3%, Vodafone and Spice Telecom at 4% each and Bharti at 3.2%. The sudden surge in the subscriber base seems to be partly because of the launch of GSM services by RCom in January with a special discounted tariff for new subscribers. Reliance added almost five million customers in January.