India to overtake the US as second biggest telecom market by April 2008

New Delhi: India is poised to become the world's second largest wireless network market after China by April 2008. India  has crossed the 250-million mobile subscribers with the addition of 8.53 million new mobile users in February, according to telecom regulator TRAI.

India's monthly wireless subscriber addition is the highest in the world, adding 8-9 million wireless users a month, compared with China's 6-7 million and only 2-3 million new subscribers in the United States.

Accordingly, India's wireless subscriber base during the first half of April 2008 will surpass that of the US and become the second-largest wireless network in the world.

In the wireless segment, 8.53 million subscribers were added in February 2008 as against 8.77 million subscribers added in the month of January 2008. India's total subscriber base (wireless + fixed line) will also cross 300 million mark in April, TRAI projected

The total wireless subscribers including GSM, CDMA & WLL (fixed) base stood at 250.93 million at the end of February 2008.The total number of telephone connections hit 290.11 million (land line connections included) at the end of February 2008 as compared to 281.62 million in January 2008, taking the overall tele-density to 25.31 per cent at the end of February 2008 as against 24.63 per cent in January 2008.

The February growth in mobile subscription in India was led by Bharti Airtel, which added 2.26 million users followed by Reliance Communications with 1.61 million and Vodafone Essar (1.41 million). The surge in wireless users is negatively impacting the fixedline segment. The fixedline subscriber base has fallen yet again to 39.18 million in February 2008 from 39.22 million in the previous month.

As the total wireless subscribers in India surged by more than a half in February from a year earlier, landline telephones continued to drop by 1.6 million between April 2007 and February 2008 to 39.18 million as more users shifted to mobile phones, the regulator's data showed.