History of telecom industry in India The history of telephone services in India found its beginning when a 50-line manual

telephone exchange was commissioned in Kolkata in the year 1882 in less than five years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. While India became independent in theyear 1947, the country had about 82,000 telephone connections, which slowly rose up to 3.05million by the year 1984. The telecom sector in India was a government monopoly until theyear 1994 when liberalization was gradually unrolled. For the first time, cellular serviceswere launched in India in Kolkata in the year 1995

Classification of Indian Telecom Sector 1: Fixed Line Telephony: BSNL and MTNL account for 90% of the revenue. Private companies are available in 18 circles and collectively account for 10% revenue. Private Sector companies offer high end services like leased lines, ISDN, videoconferencing because of which Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is more for private players. Now even the public sector companies have entered into high end services and are doing very good. Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) is one of the first in the world to deploy the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL2+) network. Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services have started in Delhi and Mumbai on MPEG-4 2: Mobile Telephony: There are approx 15 private companies providing cellular services in 19 telecom circles covering 1500 towns across the country. The DoT has now allowed cellular companies to buy rivals within same operating circles provided their combined market share does not exceed 67%. Previously the companies were allowed to buy rivals only outside their circles. - GSM (Global System for Mobile) Sector:

Private operators have 75 per cent subscribers whereas Public sector Operators (BSNL & MTNL) have 25 % subscribers in the GSM segment. - CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) Sector: CDMA technology was introduced in India as a limited mobility solution. The introduction of CDMA services has created competition, lowered tariffs and offered many citizens access to communication services for the first time. 3: Internet: Internet Telephony has been officially allowed from 1st Apr 2002. The growing demands of corporate for applications such as e-commerce, internet leased lines, ISDN, VPN etc. is the driving force for the growth in internet services market. 40 million use the Internet via mobile phones as of December 2010. Internet telephony is permitted to 128 ISPs; only 32 of which actually provide the service. New services like IP-TV and IP-Telephony are becoming popular with the demand likely to increase in coming years. The scope of services under existing ISP license conditions is unclear. 4: Telecom Equipments: Growth in telecom equipment market resulted in increasing demands for telecom services. The Government has already set up Telecom Equipment and Services Export Promotion Forum and Telecom Testing and Security Certification Centre (TETC). A large number of companies like Alcatel, Cisco have also shown interest in setting up their R&D centers in India. With above initiatives India is expected to be a manufacturing hub for the telecom equipment. Switching systems with a size of about Rs. 50 billion will remain a big market in coming future.