Telecom Industry Overview

India's telecom sector has shown massive upsurge in the recent years in all respects of industrial growth. From the status of state monopoly with very limited growth, it has grown in to the level of an industry. Telephone, whether fixed landline or mobile, is an essential necessity for the people of India. This changing phase was possible with the economic development that followed the process of structuring the economy in the capitalistic pattern. Removal of restrictions on foreign capital investment and industrial de-licensing resulted in fast growth of this sector. At present the country's telecom industry has achieved a growth rate of 14 per cent. Till 2000, though cellular phone companies were present, fixed landlines were popular in most parts of the country.

With government of India setting up the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, and measures to allow new players country, the featured products in the segment came in to prominence. Today the industry offers services such as fixed landlines, WLL, GSM mobiles, CDMA and IP services to customers. Increasing competition among players allowed the prices drastically down by making the mobile facility accessible to the urban middle class population, and to a great extend in the rural areas. Even for small shopkeepers and factory workers a phone connection is not an unreachable luxury. Major players in the sector are BSNL, MTNL, Bharti Teleservices, Hutchisson Essar, BPL, Tata, Idea, etc. With the growth of telecom services, telecom equipment and accessories manufacturing has also grown in a big way.

Indian Telecom sector, like any other industrial sector in the country, has gone through many phases of growth and diversification. Starting from telegraphic and telephonic systems in the 19th century, the field of telephonic communication has now expanded to make use of advanced technologies like GSM, CDMA, and WLL to the great 3G Technology in mobile phones. Day by day, both the public players and the private players are putting in their resources and efforts to improve the telecommunication technology so as to give the maximum to their customers.

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Market shares of public and private players

Both fixed line and mobile segments serve the basic needs of local calls, long distance calls and the international calls, with the provision of broadband services in the fixed line segment and GPRS in the mobile arena. Traditional telephones have been replaced by the codeless and the wireless instruments. Mobile phone providers have also come up with GPRS-enabled multimedia messaging, Internet surfing, and mobile-commerce. The much-awaited 3G mobile technology is soon going to enter the Indian telecom market. The GSM, CDMA, WLL service providers are all upgrading themselves to provide 3G mobile services.

Along with improvement in telecom services, there is also an improvement in manufacturing. In the beginning, there were only the Siemens handsets in India but now a whole series of new handsets, such as Nokia’s latest N-series, Sony Ericsson’s W-series, Motorola’s PDA phones, etc. have come up. Touch screen and advanced technological handsets are gaining popularity. Radio services have also been incorporated in the mobile handsets, along with other applications like high storage memory, multimedia applications, multimedia games, MP3 Players, video generators, Camera’s, etc.

The value added services provided by the mobile service operators contribute more than 10% of the total revenue.

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Subscriber Breakdown

Bharti Airtel has the largest customer base with 31% market share, followed by Hutch and BSNL with each holding 22% market share.

The 2007 budget has brought further relief to the customers with the reduction in the tariffs, both local and long distance, and with slashing down the roaming rentals. This is likely to lead to even more people going for cellular services and more and more use of the value added services. However, landline telephony is likely to remain popular, too, in the foreseeable future. MTNL, the largest landline service provider, has recently taken some bold initiatives to retain its market share and, if possible, expand it.

The leading cellular service providers have the following number of subscribers:

Service Provider	No. of CDMA Subscribers	No. of GSM Subscribers
Reliance	2.75 crores	38.76 lakhs
Tata	1.07 crores
Airtel		3.37 crores
MTNL		24.98 lakhs
BSNL		2.44 crores
Hutch		2.44 crores
Idea		1.3 crores
Spice		25.56 lakhs
BPL		10.62 lakhs
Aircel		48 lakhs

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