South Asian Business news and information

Reuters reports:

India's mobile firms have been signing about 8 million users each month since July, lured by call rates as low as 1 U.S. cent a minute and by cheap handsets.

Still, only about a quarter of the population has a phone, and the government has a target of 500 million phones by 2010.

Although the total wireless subscribers in India surged 55 percent to 242.4 million in January from year-ago levels, the fixed-line telephone subscriber base continued to contract as more users shift to mobile phones, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's data showed.

The interesting thing is that China, which has the largest number of mobile phone subscribers observed a growth of 8.42 million. The lion’s share of these cell-phone users belong to China Mobile, the largest cell-phone operator in China.  

Because of lower tariff and cheap phone sets, mobile phone has become very much affordable for Indian people. Bharti Airtel is leading the top position by bringing in 2.3 million new mobile phone subscribers. Reliance Communications Ltd. took the second place by bringing in 1.6 million subscribers and Vodafone Essar Ltd has brought in 1.3 million subscribers.

Compared to fixed line phone, mobile phones have more advantages. They could be carried anywhere and  the registration process is hastle free. For these reasons, people are moving towards using cell-phones. 

Reuters

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