India gained a staggering 15.41 million new mobile subscribers in January 2009, taking the country’s total number of wireless subscribers to 362.3 million, up from 233.63 million in the same month a year ago.

The figure is the biggest monthly growth ever, according to data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). India reported 10.81 million cellphone subscriber net additions in December 2008 and 10.35 million new subscribers in November.

Reliance Communications, India’s second-largest mobile company by users, registered the highest growth rate in January at 8.1%, followed by Idea at 5.4%, Aircel at 4.3%, Vodafone and Spice Telecom at 4% each and Bharti at 3.2%.

RComm added 4.95 million users and its subscriber base totalled 66.29 million as of January 2009. The surge in Reliance customers came after the company’s launch of GSM services for mobile communications as well as discounts to new clients. Bharti Airtel, the country’s top mobile company by users, added 2.73 million users in January, taking its user base to 88.38 million subscribers.

Following restructuring, China’s three main telcos attained a combined revenue of 813.99 billion yuan (US$119 billion) for 2008 registering a growth rate of 7%.

In January 2009, China Mobile added about 6.67 million new mobile phone subscribers to reach 463.9 million subscribers. China Unicom ended January with 134.2 million GSM subscribers, up by 839,000. The company’s broadband subscribers grew by 971,000 to reach 31.052 million.

China Telecom had 28.9 million mobile subscribers by the end of January and it added over 1 million new subscribers for the month. 970,000 fixed-line users were dropped to total 207.4 mln, but the company added 760,000 broadband subscribers to reach 45 mln. China Telecom, which bought over China Unicom’s CDMA operations last year, aims to add 35 million CDMA subscribers this year and have a total of at least 100 million mobile phone users in 2010

The Indian mobile market which is thriving even under these harsh economic conditions adds an approximate 10 million subscribers per month, as against China’s addition of 8 million subscribers monthly. The latest report by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India states that India has a teledensity of 34.5% as of January 2009, up from 33.2% in December last year. Gartner estimates the Indian mobile market will expand to 737 million subscribers by 2012.