15.7% Indians now own a phone

Total telephone connections in India have risen to 176.5 million with 6 million new users in October, pushing overall teledensity to 15.7 per cent. Much of the growth was led by mobile companies, especially GSM-based firms, which added some 4.73 million subscribers. The CDMA segment added 2 million subscribers, but the number of fixed line users were down by 80,000. The number of broadband connections at the end of September stood at 1.8 million. Under the Bharat Nirman Programme, 31,691 villages of the 66,822 remaining to be covered on November 2004, were connected. The remaining 35,131 are to be covered by November 2007.