The Telecommunication Ministry in Lok Sabha has informed the Members of Parliament that Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, TRAI has granted the 120 new Unified Access Services (UAS) licenses to 16 companies for 22 service areas including to some companies to pan-India licence during February-March 2008.
Responding to an un-starred question in Lok Sabha, Jyotiraditya M. Scindia, and the Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology said in a written reply that TRAI has approved 120 new UAS licence to enhance the competition and to improve the mobile service in all the sectors.
TRAI has also granted the dual (CDMA and GSM) licence to Reliance telecommunication on the PAN-India basis for all 22 circles. The dual licence has also been granted to Tata Teleservices in some circles despite the protest of GSM mobile operators.
In another report, Department of Telecommunication A Raja today informed the Lok Sabha members regarding the increasing number of mobile users as per data provided by TRAI.
Describing the detail information of increasing numbers of subscribers of last three years, with present year along with the growth rate, state-wise, year-wise data. The data have been provided to TRAI by all public and private mobile service operators, including BSNL, MTNL, Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Tata, Reliance and Spice along with Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) and Association of Unified Telecom Service Providers of India (AUSPI).
The Public mobile players have provided the data service area wise, state wise, number of subscribers and year-wise while private mobile players have not provided the separate data for Andaman & Nicobar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and NE-II which are included in West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and North East – I respectively.
Only Bharti Airtel has provided the detail landline figures separately for Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, as per IT department informed.
According to TRAI report, the total number of mobile subscribers by the March 31,2008 were 261.08-million as against last year’s 165.09-millions (58.14% increment), which was 56.89-million subscribers across India. This figure shows that in just within three years, the number of mobile subscribers has amplified over 4.5 times.
The comparatively growth in percentage terms were held in 2005-06 with 78.96% while in 2006-07, 62.16% of mobile subscribers augmented and in 2007-2008, the figure has gone to 58.14%.
Uttar Pradesh has topped (28.36-million) in terms of numbers of mobile subscribers in 2007-08, however it is the largest state in account of population. Maharashtra excluding Mumbai is on the second position with a total number of subscribers (21.07-millions) followed by Andhra Pradesh (20.57-million), Tamil Nadu (18.28) excluding Chennai, Karnataka (17.04) and Gujarat (16.96-million). Rest of the states excluding metropolitan cities have less then 15-million subscribers.
In the Metropolitan cities, Delhi has again cemented the top position by registering 16.28-million subscribers while Mumbai is on the second position followed by Kolkata and Chennai. The respective figures are: 13.63-million in Mumbai, 7.84-million in Kolkata and 7.06-million in Chennai.
Besides monitoring the performance of mobile service providers, TRAI also examines the congestion at the point of interconnection (POI) through monthly congestion report, the spectrum charges and licence fee and quality of service as per TRAI guidelines.
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