Telecom industry in India

India's telecommunications market began to be liberalised in 1992, when the value-added services and metropolitan paging services markets were opened to competition. Since then, additional markets have been liberalised and the sector is now fully-open to competition. Nevertheless, the state-owned domestic fixed-line and domestic and international long-distance carriers have managed to maintain their dominance of the sector, partly due to their entrenched position, partly because they have been able to draw on vast amounts of finance, …

…to deploy wireless local loop (WLL) technology to offer "limited mobility" services, much to the chagrin of the cellular operators. Increased competition is now leading to consolidation: the Bharti group has made a number of acquisitions of rivals and increased its minority ownership of certain operations to 100% over the last five years; Hutchison has purchased cellular operators in areas where it was not already active; and, VSNL has acquired successful Internet service provider Dishnet DSL.