This pushed the overall teledensity in the country to 15.7 per cent in October, an official release said on Wednesday.
The total number of telephones increased to 176.5 million from 170 million as on September 30, recording a growth rate of 3.8 per cent. Tele-density was 15.1 per cent last month.
Much of the growth was led by mobile companies, especially GSM-based firms. The GSM segment added about 4.73 million subscribers, while CDMA segment added over 2 million customers. There was a marginal decline in fixed line segment, with the number of subscribers declining by 80,000.
The North-East telecom circle recorded the highest growth rate of 9.38 per cent in GSM segment, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 9.22 per cent.
In the CDMA segment, total subscriber base grew 5.2 per cent with a net addition of two million subscribers. The number of broadband connections at the end of September 2006 stood at over 1.8 million.
Under Bharat Nirman Programme, of the 66,822 villages remaining to be covered on November 2004, a total of 31,691 village public telephones have been provided. The remaining 35131 villages having a population of more than 100 people and not lying in thick forest area are to be covered by November 2007.