Kolkata: With India adding eight million mobile phone connections every month, Japan's Mitsubishi Corporation will set up a cell phone making unit in West Bengal by 2010.

The company has tied up with city-based cell phone manufacturer, GeePee Infotech Pvt Ltd, for the project.

"Right now we are rounding up the paper work. By the end of May we will start working on the project," Bijay Agarwal, managing director of GeePee, told IANS.

"The total investment will be Rs.1 billion. Around 1,500 employees will be hired for the plant."

Agarwal said the site of the project had not yet been finalised. But according to sources at GeePee, the mobile plant is expected to come up around Haldia, 125 km from here, where Mitsubishi already has a Rs.30-billion chemical plant.

At present the Indian mobile phone market is dominated by five companies - Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG.

A survey recently conducted by the Indian Cellular Association (ICA), the apex body of mobile handset manufacturers, indicates the possibility of India becoming one of the largest mobile phone exporters by 2010 - supplying 10 percent of the total handsets required worldwide.