Already four players, including Vodafone, the world's top mobile phone company, are jostling for position in the multi-billion-dollar race for India's Hutchison-Essar, controlled by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa.

The Indian mobile market has "great potential", said Britain's Vodafone.

India added 6.8 million new mobile subscribers in November, the latest month for which figures are available.

"India's mobile subscriber base is increasing phenomenally every year -- one customer is added every second," Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran said.

India now has more than 183 million telephone subscribers, of which over 140 million are mobile customers.

"By 2010, India will have more than 500 million mobile subscribers from the current base," Maran told a conference of top telecommunications executives in New Delhi last month.

The contest for Hutchison-Essar got going in earnest in December, when Hutchison Whampoa, controlled by Hong Kong's billionaire tycoon Li Ka-Shing, made it clear it wanted to sell out its 67 percent stake in the Indian mobile company, which has 22 million subscribers.

As new bidders jump into the fray, the valuations for Hutchison-Essar have zoomed to over 20 billion dollars.

However, this hasn't deterred the potential suitors, which include a clutch of Indian companies such as Reliance Communications, India's second-largest mobile phone company, and the Hinduja group, with interests from oil to banking.

Indian steel-to-shipping group Essar, which holds the minority 33 percent stake in the company, is another possible bidder, while other companies such as Maxis Communications of Malaysia and Egypt's Orascom have also been mentioned.

India has come a long way from a decade ago, when teledensity -- the number of phones per 100 people -- was around three in the country of 1.1 billion people.