32 lakh new GSM customers in December 2005 for India

India continues to retain the title of being the world’s fastest growing mobile market. Market reports claim that the mobile industry in India has just set another new record as the market saw 32 lakh new customers joining the GSM segment. There are in all nine GSM carriers operating in the country and they had a combined customer base of around 58.503 million customers in December.

India also boasts of having some of the cheapest calling rates on their mobile connections with charges as low as less than 2 U.S. cents a minute. This makes the option to join the mobile revolution way too lucrative for the common man. The rise in the number of new connections is overwhelming compared to the month of November when the market saw a total of 23 lakh new connections.

There is massive competition in the market and the month of December saw various players in the market launching impressive schemes like ‘incoming free for lifetime’, ‘full talktime on all future top-ups’. The number of mobile users in the market grows even bigger when we add the number of users subscribing to CDMA technology based products. The country now boasts of around 75 million mobile users.

However, the market is still big enough for more juicy discounts and expandable coverage, as just around 8% of the Indian population owns a mobile phone. Even worse is the fact that two third of the overall land area of the nation is still not covered by mobile networks.