1. INTRODUCTION
India is one of the fastest growing economies of
the world and is currently the focus of a great
deal of international attention. It is the
seventh largest country in the world in terms of
its geographical size. Today it has a population
of nearly 1.1 billion which makes it the second
most populous nation in the world. With
current growth by 2025 India may even have
caught up with developed countries according
to UN.
TELECOM MARKET
Telecom sector is one of the fastest growing
sectors in India and the fastest growing
telecom market in the world, with a compound
annual growth of 34% over the last decade. This
impressive rate is a result of India’s economic
growth and liberalization policy since 1991 and
the fundamental, structural and institutional
reforms during the period. Today, India has
nearly 490 million subscribers and with an
annual addition of more than 125 million over
the last couple of years, India will reach 500
million subscriber-bases in 2010. Among the
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2. various segments, wireless or mobile segment
has been the key contributor, especially the
prepaid services, offering a wide range of
opportunities to provider and services to
customers. Greater demand for better services
and speed has made the market more
competitive; as a result tariffs have been
falling continuously across the board, making
Indian tariffs one of the lowest in the world.
Going forward, the sector is likely to achieve
greater growth rates with a whole range of new
services expected over next few years with the
coming of 3G.
The telephone coverage in India rose to 34.50%
in Jan, 2009 from 33.23% in Dec, 2008,
indicating huge market potential, especially in
rural areas. The cell phone subscribers
increased 10.81 million in Dec, 2008 and 15.40
million in Jan, 2009.
Up to the end of Jan, 2009, the total number of
cell phone subscribers in India had reached
362.3 million, the fixed phone subscribers
dropped to 37.75 million from 37.9 million in
Dec, 2008, and the broadband subscribers
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3. increased to 5.65 million from 5.45 million.
India has been divided into 19 business regions
and four large city service regions in the mobile
market, and it had issued 78 licenses to 22
companies. According to the national unified
license system, the basic telephone operators
also can apply for mobile business.
Currently, there are over 140 GSM and CDMA
operators in India, and the fierce competition
makes the cell phone expense of subscribers
shrink to just one third of the figure in 2003.
According to the statistics in the fourth quarter
of 2008, the average monthly mobile phone
expense per GSM subscriber was about INR220
and INR111 for each CDMA subscriber.
In 1998, Indian government issued the open-
door policy in the field of Internet, and now
more than 400 operators have gotten ISP
license.
The report focuses on India telecom market,
India telecom industry development strategy
and investment, India telecom business and key
operators, involving fixed phone, mobile
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4. communication and broadband & internet.
KEY PLAYERS ANALYZED
This section provides the overview, key facts,
financial information, future plans and business
strategies of prominent players in the Indian
Telecom market like Reliance Communications,
Bharti Airtel, Hutchison Essar, Idea Cellular,
Aircel Ltd, MTNL, BSNL VSNL and Tata Indicom
CONCLUSION:
India is huge market and none of service
providers can dare to ignore its potential.
That’s why Indian mobile service provider
industry is growing leap and bounce for the last
decade. This journey of 1 million to 50 million
will keep it pace until each citizen in India will
have his own mobile. Industry has many phases
in its growth. Now mobile doesn’t mean a only
a medium of communication. Services providers
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5. are now willing to provide varies facilities like
entertainment (music, video etc.) and even
banking also. We can say that business is
transforming in e-commerce to m-commerce
(mobile-commerce). In short we can say drastic
change has came in the industry along with
expanding its base in subscribers, they are
keeping eye not only to offer new facilities but
also to be the first to provide it.
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