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India's mobile subscriber base hits 34 million


May 10, 2004

Reuters

India's private telecoms firms offering CDMA-based mobile services said 259,233 customers signed up in April, boosting the mobile base to 34.56 million in the world's fastest growing major wireless market.

Data from the Association of Basic Telecom Operators (ABTO), which represents six companies, said its user base at the end of April stood at 7.41 million customers, up 3.6% from March when more than 400,000 users had opted for CDMA services.

S.C. Khanna, secretary general at ABTO, said the drop in growth rates in April was mainly because operators had launched attractive schemes in March to lure users and those tariff plans were not extended in the past month.

Late last week, rival firms offering GSM-based mobile services reported their user base had grown by just under a million customers in April to 27.15 million subscribers.

As a consequence only 1.25 million users entered the flourishing mobile sector in April compared with 1.9 million in the previous month and 1.63 million in February, pointing to slowing growth in the sector.

Some analysts have blamed the slowdown in subscribers to a combination of slow network expansion by a few carriers in remote and untapped areas, cost constraints and high duties levied by the government on telecoms equipment and handsets.

But Khanna said he was confident subscriber numbers would pick up in the coming months as leading CDMA operators such as Reliance Infocomm and the Tata were extending their reach.

Reliance is planning to expand its services to 4,000 towns and cities this year from 1,100 now.

The industry is expected to have more than 100 million subscribers by 2005 as one of the lowest call rates in the world attracts customers to the untapped market.

Roughly 3% of Indians own a mobile phone compared with more than 20% in China.

COPYRIGHT: © Reuters 2004
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