Telecom infrastructure in India has brought Indian telecom industry in an enviable position, as it is second amongst the emerging nations of Asia. Indian telecom sector ranks as the fifth largest world over.
The Indian telecom history begins in 1851 when the British India capital Calcutta (now Kolkata) witnessed its first operational landlines. However the telephone services came thirty years later in 1881. In the modern telecom scenario, the major change was the advent of private telecom business companies. In 1997, the formulation of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to facilitate the Indian telecom business plan expansion led to increased share of private telecom companies in the telecom market size of India. In 1999, the new national telecom policy came with cellular telecom services.
The smooth functioning of Indian telecom market is supervised by a government telecom regulatory body called the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The telecom regulatory authority of India is a subordinate of the ministry of telecommunications India.
The telecommunication service in India include telephone services, national and international dialing services, pay phone service, telex and telegraph (both manual & automatic), remote area business message network based on satellite transmission, email and voice mail facility, cellular mobile phone, video conferencing, VSAT, internet, and intelligent network services among the major telecom services and solutions.
The following topics define the Indian telecom industry:
GOVERNMENT ACTS FOR REGULATION OF TELECOM INDUSTRY
The various telecom India related acts by the Department of Telecommunications India are:
- Indian Telegraph Act 1885: This act empowered the government of India to take control of the existing telegraph lines and lay down the necessary infrastructure for further expansion of telecommunications in India.
- Indian Telegraph (amendment) Rules 2004: This act set the guidelines for the set up and development of public telecom services in India.
- Indian Wireless Act 1993: According to this act wireless telecom services could be set up only after due licensing from the telegraphy authority of India.
- Information Technology Act 2000: The act defines the information technology based communications in India. Telecom Industry of India was shown e-commerce way through this act in a legal manner.
- Communication Convergence Bill 2001: This bill declared the establishment of Communications Commission of India to regulate the transfer of all form of communication including broadcasting, telecommunications and multimedia.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Act 1997: The act established TRAI for the regulation of telecom business in India. Further amendments were made in the act as per the needs of the Indian telecom market that surfaced in the telecom market analysis and research conducted.
The telecom network services in India are being expanded in order to meet the in-house demands and also set new world standards. The internatinational telecom services and products by India’s overseas telecom service provider Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) include:
- Long Distance Transmission Network: It is based on terrestrial microwave radio relay and co-axial cables along with optical fibre cables.
- International Subscriber Dialing Network: It is a fully automated system with services available for all countries.
TELECOM SERVICE PROVIDERS IN INDIA
The Indian telecom directory shows two major divisions:
Fixed Service Providers (FSP’s):
These include the basic service providers that are the state operators like MTNL India and BSNL India who collectively account to over 90% of the total basic telecom services and private sector telecom service providers in india who mainly focus on leased lines, ISDN, videoconferencing and other high-end services.
Cellular Service Providers (CSP’s)
The cellular services in India are also categorized as GSM (Global Mobile Communications System) and CDMA (Code Division Multiple access) system. The leading GSM services providers in the Indian telecom industry 2007 are Hutchison or hutch (Now Vodafone and known as Orange in Maharashtra), Airtel, Idea Telecom, Tata, and Reliance. These include both pre-paid and post paid mobile phone cards and services providers. The leading CDMA providers are still Reliance communications and Tata Indicom with Airtel and Touchtel just entering the market.
INDIAN TELECOM MARKET NEWS
With the rapid increase in the telecom and IT industry in India, the major cities in india including New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Gurgaon, Noida have registered new records in the sale of various telecom products and solutions. The telecom directory of India is increasing in size day by day. The leading directories include telecom directory of Bangalore, Karnataka, Kerala and other South India areas as that is the main telecom business centre of India.
A new industry upcoming in the telecom sector of India is the telecom outsourcing or business process outsourcing (BPO). The BPO industry in India is based in the IT hubs mainly Gurgaon, Noida, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, New Delhi, Mumbai and other cities.
The Indian telecom news shows newer telecom business plans everyday, the telecom infrastructure companies in India employ newer marketing techniques to lure as many customers as possible. The telecom management india now is a separate study form in itself that covers telecom engineering courses teaching telecom engineering solutions, telecom market analysis about the new trends of the market, development of telecom network infrastructure, formulating telecom technologies and their updates by doing proper research in the field, and taking up major telecom projects for providing telecom network solutions to all.
The latest telecom new from India is that India with a mere 2.2 telecom services per 100 persons is a huge market for telecom business solutions. More and more international telecom companies are diverting their telecom technologies towards Indian Telecom sector, in order to confirm their telecom market share in India. This has also created mass telecom jobs in India; the Indian telecommunications industry provides many job opportunities especially with the BPO sector job openings.