Changing Structure, Performance, and Growth of Telecommunications in India

Abstract

The growth performance of the Indian telecommunication services industry has been significantly high since the entry of private players in the sector. It is one of the few industries in India, which has traveled from being a monopolistic to an extremely competitive and dynamic industry. The present paper evaluated the changing structure of the telecom industry in India in terms of wireline vs. wireless, public vs. private, and GSM vs.CDMA. Growth of mobile telephony has been the most visible indicator of and catalyst for economic growth. The most encouraging feature has been the growth in the number of subscribers in rural areas, which is empowering the underprivileged sections of the society. A careful examination depicts that increase in urban teledensity is more rapid in comparison to rural teledensity. However, in case of landline telephones, the compound annual growth rate has been found to be negative because of extensive use of mobile technology in place of fixed lines. The results of analysis indicate that, on the one hand, wireless services have been dominated by few companies such as Bharti, Reliance, Vodafone, Idea, BSNL ; whereas, on the other hand, wireline industry is being dominated by BSNL, MTNL, and Bharti, which implies that public sector entities are still leading wireline services. In case of Internet service providers, BSNL is the leading Internet service provider followed by Reliance Communication Infrastructure Ltd., MTNL, and Bharti. Further, the Indian telecom sector has witnessed major changes in the tariff structure resulting in lower prices.