Over 500 million Indians own telephones

The country's telecom subscriber base has crossed the 500 million-mark and the growth milestone has been achieved 15 months ahead of target.

The country had targeted reaching this number by end of 2010, but actually crossed this mark in September this year.

The number of telephone subscribers in India increased to 509.03 million at the end of September from 494.07 million in August, registering a growth rate of 3.03 per cent.

The set target of 500 million telephones by the end of 2010 has been achieved by September 2009, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said on Wednesday.

This takes the tele-density to 43.50 per cent in the country whose population stands at near 1.20 billion. Wireless tele-density stands at 40.31. Mobile operators added 15.1 million users in August.

India is the second-biggest market for wireless services, lagging only China which has more than 600 million users, and is the fastest-growing market in the world.

Mobile operators led by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Tata Teleservices wooing the customers with innovative tariff packages where call rates are already ruling at the rock bottom, which is the main driver of the booming market.

New tariff plans such as per-second billing introduced by most of the operators are likely to see huge subscriber addition, said analysts.