The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in a statement issued recently announced that nearly 11.9 million wireless (GSM, CDMA and WLL(F)) subscribers were added in April 2009. Comparatively this is lower than the 15.64 that were added in March. However, cumulatively put, the picture is quite pleasing. India’s mobile subscriber base now stands at 403.66 million. This brings the total telecom user base to 441.47 million, which includes the wireless and the wireline connections. The report is quite detailed with state-wise and service provider-wise numbers for March and April 2009.
The 11th Five Year Plan targeted to achieve a total telecom subscriber base of 500 million by 2010. At the speed at which things are progressing, we are likely to achieve that number faster than we expected. This growth in the wireless segment is being met with a marginal decrease in the wireline segment which saw a decline of 0.15 million thus pushing the subscriber base to 37.81 million in April against 37.96 million wireline subscribers in March 2009.
All this has also had a significant impact on the tele-density (the number of people having phones per a population of 100) of the nation which increased from 36.98 in March to 37.94 at the end of April.
But is it inclusive growth?
However, it’s also important to see is the trickle down effect really at work here? If we further narrow this down down to rural and urban tele-density, will this still present such results? Numbers from December 2008 tell us that the rural tele-density is about 12% against an urban tele-density of 81.3% (according to this report). Most of the private operators have about 20-30% of their subscribers in the rural areas.
