|
NEW DELHI: The total number of telephones in the country for June crossed 153.39 million compared to 148.42 million as on May 31, 2006, a growth of 3.35 per cent. The annual growth has been reported at 48.50 per cent.
The strong trend in the number of new telephone subscribers continued in the month of June with a net addition of about 4.97 million phones, an average daily addition of 1.66 lakh lines.
The mobile phone segment led the growth with GSM contributing 3.19 million and CDMA contributing 1.66 million, respectively. The additions in the fixed line segment during the month was about 0.12 million.
Of the 66,822 villages that remained to be covered under the Bharat Nirman Programme on November 2004, a total of 25870 Village Public Telephones (VPTs) have been provided. The remaining 40952 villages having more than 100 population and not lying in thick forest area are to be covered by November 2007.
The overall teledensity improved further to 13.91 per cent in June 2006 from 13.27 per cent in May 2006 and from 9.37 per cent as on June 30, 2005.
The North-East telecom circle continued to record the highest growth rate (10.10 per cent) in the GSM segment, followed by Madhya Pradesh (9.22 per cent) and Assam telecom circles (7.51 per cent).
In the CDMA segment, the total subscriber base registered a growth of 16 per cent with a net addition of 1.66 million subscribers. Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra contributed the maximum to this addition. Andhra Pradesh alone added 4.07 lakh subscribers during the month.
Public sector service providers have reached 354 cities. Further, the total number of existing ISP licensees is 408.
© CyberMedia News
|