Indian Telecom Industry

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At 861.48 million connections in April 2011' Indian Telecom Industry' is the third largest and fastest growing in the world. According to Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI), the GSM cellular subscriber base has reached to 590.19 million in May 2011 from 580.66 million at the end of April 2011.  There were 826.93 million total wireless subscribers (including GSM and CDMA) in the country at the end of April 2011.  As per projections, wireless telephony will continue to fuel growth in the Indian telecom industry with mobile subscribers base in India is expected to reach 1.159 billion by 2013.

The wireless technologies currently in use in ' Indian Telecom Industry ' are Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). There are primarily 11 GSM and 5 CDMA operators providing mobile services in 22 telecommunication circles, covering more than 2000 towns and cities across the country.  Among leading mobile operators in India include Bharti Telecom with 19.88% market share, followed by Reliance with 16.80%,  Vodafone with 16.59%, Idea Cellular with 11.16%, state owned BSNL with 11.05%, TATA with 10.8%, Aircel with 6.79%, and all others accounting for just about 6.93% of market share. 

telecom Over the last 5 years, nine out of every ten new telephone connections have been wireless. Consequently, wireless now accounts over 95% of the total telephone subscriber base, as compared to only 40% in 2003.  And the numbers are still growing for ' Indian Telecom Industry '. ' Telecom Industry in India ' is regulated by 'Telecom Regulatory Authority of India' (TRAI). It has earned good reputation for transparency and competence. Three types of players exists in ' Telecom Industry in India ' community -

 

  • State owned companies like - BSNL and MTNL.
  • Private Indian owned companies like - Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices.
  • Foreign invested companies like - Hutchison-Essar, Bharti Tele-Ventures, Escotel, Idea Cellular, BPL Mobile, Spice Communications etc.

The ' Indian Telecom Industry ' services is not confined to basic telephone but it also extends to internet, broadband (both wireless and fixed), cable TV, SMS, IPTV, soft switches etc. The bottlenecks for ' Indian Telecom Industry ' are:
 

  • Slow reform process.
  • Low penetration. Service providers bears huge initial cost to make inroads and achieving break-even is difficult.
  • Huge initial investments.
  • Limited spectrum availability and interconnection charges between the private and state operators.

The Government Broadband Policy 2004, had a target to create 9 million broadband connections and 18 million internet connections in 2007. Broadband subscription reached 12.01 million in April 2011.' Indian Telecom Industry ' is currently expected to contribute nearly 1% to India's GDP which is heartening and estimated to grow further and brighten the ' Scenario of Indian Telecom Industry '.