According to figures from the Cellular Operators' Association of India, the number of mobile phone users nationwide has almost doubled in the past year.

The trade group says that, as of last month, the country has 9.7 million cell phone subscribers - a big jump from the 5.2 million total for the same month last year. While telecom companies in other countries are mired in bad times - shrinking markets, stagnant customer growth, network over-capacity, oppressive debt loads - India's one billion people are a ripe market for connection.

After years of stagnation, India's cellular industry is finally getting a much-needed shove from the deregulation of the telecom sector.

The latest figures are hardly surprising to Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Enterprises, which has a dominant 28 per cent share of the Indian cellular market. His Airtel network's geographical coverage represents 600 million potential users.

Mr Mittal thinks nine million is nothing to write home about. 'I believe that by 2005, India will have 50 million cell phone users. This massive growth in the telecom industry will come from the younger generation. They are the real customers who decide about the value-addition the industry has to provide,' he says.

Only slightly less dramatic is the forecast by the American technology consultancy, the Gartner Group, that by 2006, India will have 44 million subscribers, making it the third-largest cellular market in Asia, after China and Japan.

Compared with China, however, the number of Indian mobile users is small. China has almost 200 million subscribers, with Chinese carriers adding five million more every month, compared with India's 500,000 monthly average.

However, the growth in new cellular customers in China has slackened to around 40 per cent while demand in India is surging - indicating that India is probably Asia's last great untapped mobile phone market.

Demand has been fuelled by low prices for both handsets and air time. Ferocious competition has forced operators to slash prices by around two-thirds over the past few years - making mobile phone calls in India the cheapest in the world, according to the International Telecommunication Union.

Fixed-line operators are also getting in on the act. The state-owned telecom company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam, launched its cell phone services in October. It is mining its 37 million-strong fixed-line user base, hoping to sign up more than 300,000 new cellular subscribers.

And thanks to cellular technology, text messages are transforming sexual relations, with Indians becoming much bolder, more flirtatious and explicit than they would ever be in person or on the telephone.

'It's liberating,' says television producer Devika Awasthi. 'I'm saying things to a man that I never thought I'd say! It's so much fun. I'd never give up my mobile - never!'