Indian telecom industry has added a record number of customers during the last month (Jan 2009).

The industry said that it added 15.41 million telephone connections during Jan 2009, which is the largest increase in a single month.

In a major announcement, TRAI said that presently it has more than 400 million telecom connections, as against December 2008’s total of 384.76 million.

With this, the overall number of people using mobile phones in India has gone up to 362.30 million, as compared to the 233.63 million during January 2008.

All these figures have proved that India is adding approximately 10 to 15 million telephone connections on a monthly basis. In January (2009) alone, the country added over 15 million telephone connections.

The mobile connections alone account for 91% of the country’s telephone base, due to which the telephone density in the country has now improved to about 35%.

During this period (Jan 09), country’s second biggest mobile company, Reliance Communications added 4.95 million users. With this, its subscriber base has touched 66.29 million mark.

Other important players in the market including Bharti Airtel, the country's top mobile company, and Vodafone Essar, controlled by Britain's Vodafone, has posted a growth of 3-4% in January 2009.

Apart from this, the country has also now has around 5.65 million subscribers to high speed internet connectivity.

Analysts said that India’s ‘mobile revolution’ is generally restricted to the cities, but the real prize for phone companies is the big rustic market, where about 70% of the population exist.

Global consultancy Gartner forecasts that India’s mobile phone owners will total 737 million by 2012.