India rings to add 10 mn cell users a mnth

India, the world's fastest-growing mobile-phone market, may add as many as 10 million subscribers a month by the end of the year, as cheaper rentals bring more customers on to phone networks expanding into the hinterland.

“I'll not be surprised,”' T.V. Ramachandran, head of the Cellular Operators Association of India, told reporters in New Delhi on Wednesday, referring to the forecast. ``The best is yet to come. We haven't seen anything yet.''

Inexpensive plans offering customers lifetime subscriptions have helped increase the number of users in the nation of 1.1 billion people, many of whom had considered a telephone a luxury until private competition drove down user charges. State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., once a monopoly in fixed-line telephones, expanded into rural areas, connecting more people to networks that now add on average six million users a month.

India aims to more than double the number of telephone users to 500 million by 2010 from 212 million. Call rates in India are as low as 2 cents a minute, the cheapest in the world.

More than 80 percent telephone subscribers use mobile phones and carriers such as Bharti Airtel Ltd. are expanding their networks to rural areas where two-thirds of the nation's 1.1 billion people live.