The Indian mobile market has added 20.55 million new customers in the first four months of 2007 – less than the 20.96 million recorded in the same period in 2006. There are two reasons for this shortfall.

Firstly, in April 2006 Reliance Communications made an adjustment to the way it counted mobile subscribers, including its fixed-wireless customers in the figures for the first time and boosting its ranks as a result.

Secondly, March 2007 saw the termination of India’s customer re-verification procedure whereby the personal details of all of the country’s mobile subscribers had to be checked by the operators – and a procedure which saw the same operator, Reliance, disconnect some 4 million unverified customers. Read more.