More than billion telephones in India

The number of telephones in India crossed one billion at the end of April. At present, India is behind China which has 1.28 billion mobile subscribers and 246.94 million fixed-line subscribers at the end of February.

In China, the telephone subscribers account for 94.5 per cent of the country’s population, however in India the coverage is 77-80 per cent. This is because of multiple connections and inactive users.

According to the telecom regulatory authority of India, the telephone subscriber base was 996.49 million at the end of March and there were 969.89 million wireless subscribers. In April,  an extra of 5 million GSM users came up. Adding this number to various different services like CDMA and broadband, the telephone subscriber base has crossed one billion.

Fixed-line subscribers with state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar telephone Nigam are declining each month and have reached 26.59 million in March.

In the year 2005, the wireless subscriber base 1st doubled to 75.1 million from 47.6 million in 2004. This happened after incoming calls were made free. The wireless subscriber base reached 228.9 million from 146.7 million a year ago in 2007. This was the result of the government increasing foreign direct investment within the telecom sector to 74 per cent from forty nine per cent.

Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay (Free for commercial use)

Image Reference: https://pixabay.com/photos/iphone-smartphone-apps-apple-inc-410324/