India’s largest Telecoms firm by sales will add 16 million GSM mobile phone lines by September this year. The world's fastest-growing major mobile market BSNL will wipe out the waiting list for its connections, India’s federal telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran told reporters on Saturday.

He added that the company has begun work on four million lines each in north, south, east and west zones. Maran also said BSNL would start offering 3G mobile services by the end of the year. The promise of explosive growth has resulted in India's wireless sector becoming a magnet for global equipment makers such as Ericsson and Nokia, who are facing tepid most Western markets.

Only five in 100 Indians own a mobile phone, compared with more than a quarter in China, the world's largest mobile market. India's flourishing wireless sector has grown at a compound 85 percent a year over the past six years, and tariffs have dropped 37 percent a year over the past four years to as low as 2-3 U.S. cents a minute, the cheapest anywhere in the world.

Up to 1.7 million new mobile users enter the market each month, and the number is set to increase in coming months.