Cell phone spread overtakes landlines

The boom in the fastest growing telecom market in the world, especially the phenomenal growth over the last 12 months, has resulted in the mobile tele-density overtaking that for fixed lines all over the country, barring Kerala and the north-eastern states.

Higher tele-density for mobiles as compared to landlines was considered as a "metro phenomenon" till last year. An indicator of the pace of growth is the fact that it was only in the second half of 2005 that the total number of mobile phone users in the country caught up with the number of landlines.

India, however, finished the year with a mobile subscriber base of 76 million, as compared to a fixed line user base of 49 million.

In all metros, mobile tele-density has risen to nearly twice that for fixed lines, with Delhi registering the highest with 43.80 per cent for cellular and 18.0 per cent for landlines, followed by Chennai at 41.41 per cent and 22.62 per cent, Mumbai at 40 per cent and 19.18 per cent and Kolkata at 20.02 per cent and 12.34 per cent.

The metros apart, only Kerala (10.88 per cent) and Punjab (16.37 per cent) can boast of double-digit mobile tele-density, while Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka have registered figures close to the 10 per cent mark. However, despite mobile growth catching up with the growth rate in China, at least 10 states in the country have a penetration of less than 5 per cent.

These include Uttar Pradesh (east), Uttar Pradesh (west), Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Assam and the North-East.

Operators, on the other hand, remain confident that mobile telephony would flourish in rural India over the next two years as the DoT had recently reached a deal with private and state-owned operators to use the Universal Service Obligation Fund towards mobile telephony in rural India.