Cell phone subscriptions surge in India

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has announced that 41.26 million Indians have subscribed to phone service since the beginning of 2005. Of the 5.33 million phone people who subscribed to phone service in March 2006, 94 percent were solely for mobile phones, bringing the number of Indians with phone service to 140 million. Of those phones, 36 percent are land lines and 64 percent are cell phones. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India also announced today that 1.3 million Indians have broadband connections.

To put this in perspective, as of December 2005 more than 2 billion people in the world had cell phones, according to Informa Telecoms and Media statistics released in CTIA's April report. As of last year, according to the report, 69 percent of Americans--almost 208 million--were cell phone subscribers. But less than 12 percent--about 103 million--of Africans were subscribers. All of these statistics follow China's Ministry of Information February announcement that China has passed the 400-million mark for mobile phone users. The ROA Group, an Asian market analyst group, predicts that China will reach the 600-million mark by 2009 and there will be 3 billion cell phone users worldwide by the end of 2008.