Mirroring the growth in cellular services, the basic telecom, including the wireless in local loop (mobile) services, has bagged 31.82 lakh (3.18 million) customers, with Reliance Infocomm leading the tally with 16.7 lakh (1.67 million) at the end of June this year.

Reliance was followed by Tata Teleservices with a total subscriber base of 741,000.

Tatas, which are offering fixed wireline, fixed WLL and mobile WLL services, will launch its WLL mobile services in Maharashtra soon.

Reliance's entire subscriber base consists of WLL mobile customers in 15 states in which Maharashtra is leading with 419,000, followed by Delhi with a customer base of 313,000, according to the latest figures released by the Association of Basic Telecom Operators for private basic telecom service providers.

ABTO also claimed that the WLL mobile service was now available in 550 cities/towns across the country.

Sunil Mittal owned Bharti Group, which offers only wireline and fixed WLL services, has secured a customers base of over 400,000 from the states of Delhi, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

HFCL and Shyam Telelink settled with a subscriber base of 110,000 and 87,155 in the states of Punjab and Rajasthan, respectively.