One crore and counting. Yes, Chennai has joined the elite list of cities which boast of one crore mobile phone connections. Delhi (comprising Faridabad, Ghaziabad and NCR) tops the list with about 2.4 crore and Mumbai, with 2.08 crore subscribers, comes next. Chennai, which enjoys the highest teledensity in the country at 131% (131 wireless or mobile connections per 100 persons), had 99,99,553 mobile subscribers in July end. In the beginning of August, the city needed to add another 447 subscribers to touch the one crore mark; now it has crossed the milestone. With a population of nearly 70 lakh, the Chennai Metropolitan Area, spanning nearly 1,200sqkm, is a huge market for telecom firms. The city has seven operators and one more will start services soon. Between June and July, the operators added more than 3.47 lakh subscribers, according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data. Most people have multiple SIM cards .“Chennai has the highest teledensity in India. This is followed closely by Delhi and Mumbai. Bangalore and Hyderabad are inching closer to the 100% mark. The fact that Chennai has a perfect ecosystem — manufacturing, IT and the services sector — contributes to this factor,” Kumar Ramanathan, head of operations (south), Vodafone, said. The high teledensity rate in the city indicates that an average user here has multiple SIM cards. Total mobile subscriptions here stood at nearly 3.19 crore connections (excluding Chennai) at the end of July 2009, an addition of 15.10 lakh consumers from June. The state has the second highest number of mobile phone subscribers after Maharashtra.
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