Rivalry among competitors
The Indian Telecom industry is comprised of three types of players. The State owned companies, private companies and foreign invested companies. Main State owned companies are BSNL and MTNL. Major private Indian owned companies include Tata teleservice, Tata Communications, Reliance communications. And finally, the major foreign invested companies in this sector are Vodafone, Idea cellular, Bharti Airtel Limited.
BSNL
Bharath Sanchar Nigam Limited was formed in October 2000, When the Department of Telecom operations of Government of India was converted in to a company. It is presently the leading telecommunication company in India. It is also the largest public sector firm of the country. Presently, it has got about 46 million basic telephone capacity, 8 million Wireless Local Loop (WLL) capacity and about 52 million GSM capacity. BSNL is way ahead in landline subscribers compared to its rivals, with about 35.1 million basic phone subscribers, which is 85% of the subscriber base. BSNL has got about 2.5 million internet customers. In cellular services, BSNL is competing with the top contenders so as to become the largest provider of GSM services.
Bharti Airtel
Bharti Airtel is one of India’s leading telecom service provider. It concentrates on GSM services, wireless landline services, internet broadband services and also Direct To Home(DTH) digital TV services. Airtel extents its presence in all 22 licensed India telecom circles. It also provides GSM services in countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and also 16 countries in Africa. It has about 187.7 million GSM subscribers. It is also the largest mobile service provider in the country, with 21.34% market share in India.
Reliance communications
Reliance communications formerly Reliance infocomm, a leading integrated telecom company, is a flagship company of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) of companies. It has over 100 million customers.