In yet another landmark for the cellular industry, India has added highest number of mobile subscribers in the world during August.
That beat China's monthly increases, although its base is nearly four times that of India.
India added 5.9 million cellular subscribers during August as against China's 5.19 million, according to industry estimates and UK-based journal Wireless Intelligence.
Russia, on the other hand, added 3.6 million subscribers during the month.
As of August end, India had 116.5 million cellular subscribers - 86.6 million on GSM networks (Airtel, BSNL, Hutch, Idea) and 29.9 million on CDMA (Reliance and Tatas).
China however continues to lead the world in overall numbers with 421 million subscribers, followed by US (190 million), Japan (157 million) and Russia (148 million). India is at the fifth place.
The first mobile phone in India was launched in 1995, but real growth began only in the past five years or so and once dubbed as 'a toy for the rich', the mobile phone has now become an essential economic tool in the hands of plumbers, cabbies, carpenters and professionals.
In fact, cellular telephony has grown rapidly across the world.
Globally, there were 2.5 billion cellular subscribers by August end, of which 500 million were added in the past 12 months. Of these half a billion subscribers, most of the additions happened in China, India and Russia.
Worldwide, the cellular industry has been growing at 40 million subscribers a month, with Asia-Pacific region accounting for 41%. In contrast, India and China together accounted for 25% of additions worldwide.