India had 14.54 million landlines in 1997 and the number has grown to only 32.17 million by 2012. On the other hand, the country had only 0.34 million mobiles in 1997, which has now grown to 919.18 million by 2012.
Hockey stick growth of mobile phones in India
Fall of Landline telephones in India
What’s interesting is that landline telephones continued to increase till the year 2002-03 and has been on a continuous decline since then (except for year 2006-07).
| At the end of March | Landline telephones | Mobile telephones | Total telephones |
| 1997 | 14.54 | 0.34 | 14.88 |
| 1998 | 17.8 | 0.88 | 18.68 |
| 1999 | 21.61 | 1.2 | 22.81 |
| 2000 | 26.65 | 1.88 | 28.53 |
| 2001 | 32.7 | 3.58 | 36.28 |
| 2002 | 38.29 | 6.68 | 44.97 |
| 2003 | 41.32 | 13.29 | 54.61 |
| 2004 | 40.92 | 35.61 | 76.53 |
| 2005 | 41.42 | 56.95 | 98.37 |
| 2006 | 40.22 | 101.87 | 142.09 |
| 2007 | 40.77 | 165.09 | 205.86 |
| 2008 | 39.41 | 261.08 | 300.49 |
| 2009 | 37.96 | 391.76 | 429.72 |
| 2010 | 36.96 | 584.32 | 621.28 |
| 2011 | 34.73 | 811.6 | 846.33 |
| 2012 | 32.17 | 919.18 | 951.35 |
* All figures are in million.
As a technology with massive access, what do you think could have helped Landline business grow in the times of mobile devices? Will this gap further increase, now that the government is mulling plans to give away free phones to poor populace?
