India's telecom density now 18.7 percent

Thursday, 24 May 2007, 19:30 IST
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New Delhi: With a net addition of 4.9 million telecom subscribers into the network last month, India's telephone density has touched 18.7 percent, even though the number of fixed-line phones declined by 230,000 connections. The total number of telephone connections has accordingly expanded to more than 211.7 million, compared with 146.20 million during April 2006, representing a growth of 44.8 percent, it was announced Thursday. "The GSM segment has also shown an increase of 4.13 million during the month of April 2007. While the CDMA segment registered an increase of 1.01 million, the fixed segment has declined by 0.23 million," an official statement said. In the GSM segment, Tamil Nadu led the growth by adding more than 440,000 new connections in April, while Uttar Pradesh emerged the strongest market for the CDMA segment by adding 196,000 new subscribers. "The growth of broadband connections improved further. At the end of March 2007, about 2.3 million broadband connections were provided. The coverage of broadband connectivity by public sector service providers has reached 962 cities." The statement said of the 66,822 villages to be covered under a special scheme, 47,747 had been provided with public telephones and the remaining 19,075 were to be covered by November this year.
Source: IANS