Indian Telecom Network Grows by 40 Percent in 2010

Now here’s something that will bring a smile to faces still clouded by the Raja 2G scam. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology have reported that the Indian Telecommunications network has grown by a massive 40 percent this year and as of October 31, stands at a total of 742.13 million connections. 706.70 million of the connections are wireless, which now makes the Indian Telecom Network the largest wireless network in the world.

The numbers game

The Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-2012) set the end-of-plan target at 600 million connections, a figure that was surpassed 22 months early in February 2010. To better understand just how monumental these numbers are, we’ll have to compare these numbers to the ones released in 2003. The reported total number of connections was 54.6 million, a paltry figure compared to the 742.13 million it is now. Even more striking was the growth within the year, with a marked 120.85 million increase from March to October.

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Other points of interest were Vodafone and Reliance hitting the 100 million subscriber mark, which follows Airtel doing the same last year. Broadband connections also showed a pretty decent increase – from 0.18 million subscribers in 2005 to 8.8 million on March 31, 2010 and finally to 10.34 million at the end of October 2010.

Speaking about the ministry’s future plans, the report said they plan to take 3G very seriously, claiming it would “completely transform the character of the internet/broadband scenario in India”. The Ministry also plans to finally roll Mobile Number Portability out on 20th January 2011, which was something the masses have wanted for absolute ages. While the service was implemented in Haryana in November, the rest of the country had to wait – something that will be rectified soon, because networks in the other areas have already started migrating to the MNP environment.

Lots of positive news in there and we hope this upward trend continues.