Telephone Connections in India Jump by 44 Lakh, 12 Lakh of Them From Jammu and Kashmir: DoT

India recorded an increase of 43.9 lakh telephone connections in the month of January 2020, according to the latest “Monthly Telecom Scenario” report by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). The report said that India had a total of 117.58 crore telephone connections at the end of January. This reflects an increase from the previous figure of 117.14 crore telephone connections at the end of December 2019. This rise has been attributed to Jammu and Kashmir by the DoT.

Telephone connections in Jammu and Kashmir
According to the data, Jammu and Kashmir recorded a massive rise of more than 12 lakh connections in the union territory in just one month. Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh (East) followed it by adding nearly 7.6 lakh and 6.3 lakh connections respectively. There were restrictions placed on telecom connectivity in Jammu and Kashmir in August after Article 370 was practically revoked and the erstwhile state was made a union territory. The restrictions on communication were gradually relaxed later on. In January, prepaid services were restored there.

Therefore, just the above mentioned three circles added more than 25 lakh telephone subscribers. However, there were circles like Madhya Pradesh that registered a decline of 3.48 lakh telephone connections. Bihar also witnessed a decrease of about 54,000 subscribers.

Internet subscribers, teledensity
Coming to the total number of Internet subscriptions, it climbed to 71.87 crore by December 2019. Among these, there were 69.6 crore wireless and 2.24 crore wired subscriptions.

The report mentioned that the teledensity in India stood at 88.74 percent with Himachal Pradesh circle registering the highest teledensity at 149 percent. Among the metros, Delhi topped that chart with 237.3 percent teledensity.

The share of wireless segment in the overall connections stood at 98.34 percent at the end of January 2020. Remaining 1.66 percent were wirelines connections. Also, the share of rural areas in the number of connections stood at 43.72 percent and 56.28 percent connections were urban ones.

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