Projecting Teledensity in India Using Logistic and Gompertz Curve Models

Just five years ago, India had only 36 million telephones for more than 1000 million people. From 2000-01 to 2005-06, India added more than 100 million new telephone subscribers. Presently, Indian telecommunication network with around 140 million telephone connections is one of the largest and the fastest growing network in the world. As a consequence, teledensity number of telephones per 100 inhabitants in the country has improved considerably. It has increased by more than 3.5-fold in last five years, from 3.55 in 2000-01 to 12.66 in 2005-06. The Government of India aims to raise the teledensity in the country to more than 40 in next five years. Tliis study tries to verify whether teledensity in India could reach a level of around 40 by the year 2010-11. For this, we projected the future path of teledensity in the country using S-shaped logistic and Gompertz curve models. Annual data of teledensity from 1990-91 to 2005-06 have been used for the same. It is found that the teledensity in the cou n try is likely to cross the mark of 40 in 2010-11.