India's Telecom Truth?

6:00 PM -- India's telecom sector is by far the fastest growing telecom market worldwide and official Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) figures put the number of mobile lines activated by the country's service providers at more than 850 million, about 70 per cent of the country's population.

However, there are now many questions about just how many of these lines are active. TRAI has been trying to address this issue by including Visitor Location Register (VLR) data in its monthly reports, with the latest statistics showing 594.8 million of the country's 851.7 million mobile lines are active.

Now a survey carried out by independent agency Juxt Consult suggests the number of active lines might be even lower. According to the survey, only 487 million people have an active mobile connection, putting India's mobile penetration rate at about 34 per cent. This figure includes the number of people who have more than one number or use dual-SIM phones.

The survey also looks at mobile Internet use. According to the government there are about 100 million Internet users in India, of which 40 million access the Internet using their mobile devices.However, the survey suggests that only about 14.4 million people (about 3.5 per cent of India's mobile users) access the Internet via their mobile device. The survey also suggests that mobile Internet usage growth stands at about 25 per cent compared with the 37 per cent often cited by pundits.

The survey was carried out on nearly 200,000 individuals residing in about 50,000 households covering all the key 80 of the 88 regions classified by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO).

So the question is -- what is the true size of India's mobile industry? Are Juxt's numbers closer to the truth than TRAI's? Maybe, we need a crusader for telecom too.

Ankush Sharma, Copy Editor, Light Reading India