By IANS
New Delhi : There are now 250 million telephone subscribers in India, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said here Monday. This number has been achieved ahead of the scheduled target date of end December.
The tele-density in the country has risen to 21.85 percent in September compared with 21.20 percent in August.
“Keeping growth projections on the conservative side, the subscriber number has already crossed 250 million, the target for December 2007. Thus, expectations of 500 million subscribers by 2010 is by no means ambitious,” said the TRAI in a statement.
The number of wireless telephone subscribers reached 209.08 million at the end of last month.
However, growth in the number of wireless subscribers fell, with 7.80 million new additions in September compared with 8.31 million in August.
In the landline segment, 39.58 million subscribers were added last month against 39.73 million additions in the month preceding it.
During the first six months (April-Sep) of 2007, 42.80 million telephone subscribers have been added as compared with 29.70 million during the corresponding period previous year, said the TRAI.
The growth in the number of broadband users remained steady with 2.56 million additions in Aug and 2.67 million in Sep.