India now has 100 mn mobile phone users

Despite concerns over how exact these numbers are, Communications and Information Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran said today that the Department of Telecom (DoT) will soon be able to verify the exact subscriber numbers using fresh evaluation criteria.

‘‘Even if there are discrepancies, they won’t be over 5-6 per cent,’’ Maran told reporters. ‘‘Besides, it is a fact that more handsets are sold than corroborated by operators,’’ he said.

Telecom operators have been saying that the mobile subscriber count has grown at 4-5 million every month this year, but their numbers are now being questioned.

This is because some 1.8 lakh connections provided by Hutch in its Haryana circle have been found to belong to around 2,200 subscribers. This has led to fears of widespread inflation of subscriber numbers by operators.

But Maran said that if a different system of subscriber headcount is followed, it will chiefly help ensure fair allocation of spectrum, not just re-check the subscription numbers.

‘‘We are now in the M-5 club, and we should be happy. There is no need to find unnecessary loopholes since we are sure of making it to 250 million phones by 2007 and 500 million phones by 2010. We are aware of the situation in Haryana, but there is no need to extrapolate the situation on the entire country,’’ the Minister said.

At present in India, subscribers are counted on the basis of the number of SIM cards or connections sold. The government will now consider moving to a system of counting the total number of active connections.

‘‘The total number of active subscribers will be necessary for reasons of spectrum allocation,’’ Maran said today.

Both the SIM card or connection data and active-subscriber data is maintained by telecom operators.

With 100 million mobile phone users and 150 million combined users of land lines and mobiles, the government has also been pushing operators to set up better consumer grievance redressal systems.

On Thursday, the GSM and CDMA operators jointly promised they will consider setting up an ‘Ombudsman’ to address individual customer’s complaints. The ombudsman will be self-regulated by the industry and will ensure that cosumer complaints are cleared fast.

Consumers who take their complaints to the ombudsman will not be able to go to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) or the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Arbitration Tribunal (TDSAT)