India's tele-density increases to 20 per cent

The number of telephone users in the country has risen to 232.9 million, or 20.5 per cent of the population, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has said.

Indian mobile-phone operators jointly added a record 8.06 million new wireless subscribers last month, taking the number till the end of July to 193 million.

The number of fixed-line subscribers declined by 200,000 in July. More than half the Indian population may own mobile phones by 2015 as carriers such as Bharti and Reliance Communications, the nation's two largest wireless operators, increase access in rural areas, Tucker Grinnan and Rajiv Sharma, analysts at HSBC Holdings Plc, said today.

The number of wireless users reported by the regulator includes users on the global system for mobile, or GSM, network; the code division-multiple access, or CDMA, platform, as well as callers using the so-called wireless local loop technology.