Times of India is reporting that Delhi has 93% Teledensity, and there are about 12 million mobile phones, for this city of about 16 Million residents( thats 75%). Rest of it is the land line phones.
12 years back- 1995, mobile phones were launched in Delhi with the services of Essar Cellphone and Airtel.
Two years later, my family was still struggling to get a Land line phone installed at home ( It was a 14 month wait list for us, having registered for the phone in 1996 March, and got it in May 1997. ) The idea that most of the world, gets a phone pre-installed in a new house, was a bit of a utopian thing. In those days Pager services were just being launched and were supposed to be big business. Luckily we skipped the pager phase.
Today, you can get a land line phone on demand, and a mobile phone service – well probably the second mobile number, the moment you land in a dealer shop. All this in just about a decade.
No city has caught up on the mobile phone craze as Delhi. During the initial days people would keep a mobile phones and use it as a Pager ( aka. Give me a “Missed call” -a truly unique Indian phenomenon) and call back from a land line, and reasonably so, as the rates were Rs 16 per minute outgoing as well as Incoming. It was a craze, and a fad, and a utility – all in One. Today, sometimes my mother calls me up all the way to Indonesia, just to know what I had for dinner.
Delhi still leads the pack in India, and is ready to take the next steps by getting city wide WIMAX before 2010.