India: an overview

The Indian mobile market has experienced high customer growth rates since 2000. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), India's 46 million mobile customers have already surpassed its fixed-line customers (source: TRAI news release dated 9 November 2004). In March 2000, there were 1.9 million mobile customers in India. This increased to 33.7 million by March 2004 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 105.2% (source: TRAI annual report 2003-2004). As of December 2004, there were 49 million mobile customers in India. The growth in the number of mobile customers is illustrated in Figure 1. The customer growth during 2000-2004 can be studied under two phases.