India's mobile phone subscriber base declined by 1.74 million in September to 906.62 million, the third straight monthly fall, as carriers in the world's second-biggest wireless market disconnected inactive users in a clean-up drive. The growth in subscriptions slowed last year, after rising at a monthly average of 19 million in 2010 as the market showed signs of saturation and also as companies started disconnecting users who did not use their phones for months. In August, carriers had lost a total 5.13 million mobile subscribers. By comparision, China, the world's biggest mobile phone market, had 1.08 billion mobile subscribers as of September.