Mobile phone subscriber base at 1.9 mn with 88 pc growth

May 2: Total cellular subscriber base stood at 18,84,311 on April one against a little over one million the same day in 1999, COAI statistics showed. Delhi outpaced Mumbai in the growth of subscriber base with 3.32 lakh connections, while Mumbai has only 3.19 cell phone connections. Calcutta has over 90,000 mobile users, while Chennai has only 54,000 users.

Chennai, among metros, showed the poorest growth rate with hardly 54,000 users between the two operators. RPG Cellular has 29,000 connections and Skycell has only 25,000 users.

In the `A’ category circles, Gujarat appeared promising with 1.46 lakh connections, followed by Karnataka with 1.27 lakh connections. Among the `B’ class circles, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh (East) have maximum number of users with 1.06 lakh and 1.13 connections respectively.