By IANS
New Delhi : India, the world’s fastest growing telecom market with the lowest call tariffs, added a whopping 8.74 million subscribers in January, official data released Friday said.
With this, the total number of telephone connections stood at 281.62 million at the end of January 2008, compared to 272.88 million in December 2007, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said.
The overall tele-density increased to 24.63 percent in January 2008.
The wireless segment saw a surge of 8.77 million subscribers last month compared to 8.17 million in December. This pushed the total wireless subscribers base to 242.40 million by Jan 31.
“This is the highest ever addition in a month till date,” TRAI said.
However, lower growth was recorded in the wire-line segment with 39.22 million new subscribers as compared to 39.25 million in December.
The broadband subscriber base has reached 3.24 million by the end of January. It was 3.13 million by the end of December.
India has set a target of 500 million telephone and 20 million broadband connections by 2010.