The Indian telecom market continues to shine despite the gloom in almost every other sector. Even in the face of the economic slowdown, the month of October saw telecom operators adding 10.42 million mobile subscribers, the highest monthly addition so far. Before this, the 10 million subscriber addition mark has been crossed only twice –­ in March 2008 (10.16 million additions) and September 2008 (10.07 million additions). With the record subscriber addition in October, the total mobile subscriber base in the country has reached 325.73 million.

In terms of the break-up, the GSM segment added around 8 million subscribers in October, its highest ever addition. This has increased the GSM user base to 242 million. CDMA operators accounted for the remaining additions. Amongst the operators, Bharti Airtel added 2.72 million users, which took the company's total subscriber base to 80.2 million. Vodafone Essar signed up 2.1 million users over the month to take its user base to 56.7 million. Reliance Communications posted the third highest subscriber addition of 1.76 million users, taking its tally to 57.8 million.

Broadband also witnessed a steady increase in October with the subscriber base crossing the 5 million mark. From 4.9 million in September 2008, the broadband user base reached 5.05 million in October.

In contrast to the exponentially growing mobile subscriber base, the wireline segment witnessed a fall in the number of users, from 38.35 million in September to 38.22 million in October.

The total number of phone connections (mobile and wireline) in the country rose to 363.95 million in October, taking the teledensity to 31.5 per cent from 30.64 per cent in September. Given the pace of growth, the government's target of 500 million mobile subscribers by 2010 seems to be easily achievable.