Despite spectrum allocation and other technological challenges, the growth buzz of the Indian telecom market continues unabated, thus bearing out its strong growth potential. While the telecom network (particularly the cell phone network) and subscriber base have grown exponentially over the past five years, it is just the beginning and there is still a lot more to come.

The unparalleled euphoria in the Indian telecom sector has shaped the vision of "New India", by bringing about a total transformation. Surprisingly, the industry has started adding more than 7 million subscribers per month, and the country has already crossed 250 million subscribers three months ahead of the target date. The vast market share of PSUs like BSNL and MTNL is likely to get reduced further due to increased market penetration by the private players. The nation is on the cusp of a telecom revolution, especially in the wireless (GSM, CDMA and WLL (F)) telephony segment, which in recent times is growing at around 50% per annum. On the whole, teledensity picked up to 22.52% by the end of October 2007 as compared to 15.12% as of September 2006. The FY07 also marked a strong 70% year-on-year (YoY) increase in the Internet broadband subscriber base. Robust growth also continued in the GSM mobile space with an increase of 59.22 lakh subscribers during the month of September 2007 alone.

Both the mobile phone tariffs and the Average Revenue per User (ARPU) fell significantly during FY07 though there was significant rise in the average Minutes of Use (MOU) per subscriber. Growing choice and the lower tariffs have encouraged rapid growth in the use of cellular services. Even though the Indian telecom industry picked up pace after liberalization, the country had one of the world's lowest phone penetration rates at the start of the 1990s. All the same, to reach the current position, it had a historic voyage _ from prohibitively expensive cellular telephony and waitlisting for landline phone connections to affordable connection on demand; from public sector monopoly to determined competition.

Thanks to progressive government initiatives to rationalize duties and tariffs and to relax the foreign investment norms, the Indian telecom market is now one of the fastest growing high potential markets in the international arena, offering enormous opportunities to the telecom operators, equipment suppliers and investors.

Marketing Mastermind Magazine, Indian Telecom Market, Average Revenue per User, Public Sector Monopoly, Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization, LPG, Customer Acquisition, Customer Relationship Management, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, TRAI, GSM Services, Internet Service, Reliance, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, Tata.