Mobile phone connections in India will reach 600 million in five years time as handsets and tariffs become more affordable for the urban population, according to a new study published by the Centre for Telecoms Research (CTR), London.

The report expects urban populations of India to reach high levels of mobile phone saturation in five years time, to the extent where many phone users will have two or more handset connections. A large portion of this growth will arise from pre-paid connections, driven by the increasing affordability of handsets and tariffs amongst India's lower middle classes.

"The phenomenal growth in the Indian mobile phone market has largely been driven by urban consumption. We expect this to continue with urban geographies achieving saturation levels similar to current Western European markets in the next five years. Mobile connections in rural geographies will be constrained by coverage of network infrastructure and affordability of handsets which will limit consumption to no more than 150 million by 2011," said Raj Modi, Research Director at Centre for Telecoms Research.

The report India Mobile Market Statistics, 2002-2011 also expects mobile phone users to spend more on mobile data services driven largely by the popularity of Bollywood mobile content (e.g. Ringtones, Icons etc ).