Every 6th person in Himachal has a mobile

Mobile phones have reached the masses in Himachal Pradesh. According to the latest count, every sixth person here owns a mobile phone.

With a population of 6,200,000, the number of mobiles here are 11,21431, say government sources.

The boom in mobile users is seen particularly in the mountainous and rugged terrain of the state where other forms of communication and means of transportation are scarce and expensive.

Mobile towers can be seen fast emerging atop ridges and hill tops.

According to the latest figures, until October this year, Bharti Airtel leads the pack with 468,667 customers. Airtel was the first to enter the hill state's mobile market a decade ago.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), which joined the race some five years later, has a customer base of 309,821. Reliance Telecom has 108,915 customers, while Tata has 64,386, followed closely by Reliance Infocomm with 63,841 customers.

However, now both the firms come under Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications.

The Aditya Birla group's Idea was the last to enter the state some months ago and has picked up 5,801 customers.

Sources say majority of the mobile phones (993,204) are operating on the GSM network technology and the remaining 128,227 are using the CDM technology.

With more and more players targeting the huge rural market of the hill state, there was a growing trend last year to surrender wired BSNL landline phones, which often remain out of order for long periods due to poor service by the state-run company.