'Delhi's subscriber revenue highest'

Sanjay Anand / TNN / Sep 3, 2006, 00:15 IST

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"This is going to be an awesome achievement, if you bear in mind that actual cellular growth in India began around 2000," says COAI DG TV Ramachandran.

NEW DELHI: Bharti CMD Sunil Mittal, who launched the first cellular service in Delhi in 1995, says he still remembers the day when he got the message that Airtel had crossed the 10,000 mark.
"It was such a matter of joy. Little did we realise that Delhi will have 10 million customers within 10 years. It is a matter of pride to be part of shaping this historic moment."
Soon after Airtel, there were other companies like Hutch, Reliance, Tata, Idea and MTNL that realised the business potential of the city and joined ranks to sell mobile connections.
"This is going to be an awesome achievement, especially if you bear in mind that actual cellular growth in India began only around 2000," says COAI DG TV Ramachandran. "Besides, we should also keep in mind that Delhi's per subscriber revenue is the highest in the country.

"It would (10 million subscribers) establish the fact Delhi is the telecom capital of India," adds Ramachandran.
But, there is another side to the achievement here, and that is teledensity — number of phones per 100 people.
If all phone connections are taken into account — cellular, landline, fixed wireless, wireless in local loop (another two million), Delhi's total would be over 12 million. That would be a teledensity of well over 80%, something that is heard of only in developed countries.
Just for contrast, India's teledensity is only about 15% and rural teledensity under two per cent, among the worst in the world. As some would say, we have millions of connections to go before we rest.

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