Cable and Wireless

Indian telecommunication industry is going at a pace today where we cannot afford to think what happened yesterday. All we can think about is what is happening today and what is going to happen tomorrow.

First telecommunication meant radio, television, then in its true sense, telephones, and then, mobile phones. Even today when we think of telecommunications, first thing that comes to our minds is a cellular phone. But the fact is that today telecommunication means so much that we cannot even visualize instantly. Telecommunicationhas gone back into wires, and more amount of data than ever before is in the air simultaneously, with the existing and coming wireless technologies.

With the BSNL IPTV already in the market, and Airtel and others all set to launch theirs (Don't know if any other operator has launched IPTV), the telecommunications field has already got a new face, one that combines the information-centric internet and environment-primary television.

Internet on the go is no more a dream either, for those who really want it. With the PCMCIA cards and beautiful 1-x CDMA modems coming to a price range affordable for the middle-class, you can now find students working on their net-connected-laptops, which was used to represent business class flyers by airlines not long ago.

And then comes the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, better known as Wi-Max. The current year has seen Wi-Max starts from BSNL, Aircel, VSNL, Bharti, Reliance, and Sify. Among these, Bharti has already deployed its services in eleven cities and is planning to expand, and a lesser known Aircel has invested $1 bn in the upcoming technology.

Now we shall talk about another facet of telecommunication. The direct-to-home (DTH) service, once under the monopoly of DishTV, and later extended to DDDirect+ and Tata Sky, is soon expected to see a number of new operators with Bharti, Reliance, Videocon, and Sun TV all set to jump into the market, starting a new competition altogether.

Interestingly, DTH is a segment where we find only one or two operators in a place almost anywhere in the world. But here, four new operators are planning to start their services in a short span of time, with 3 operators already existing. And actually, I still hope they'll all find their market in the world's second largest population.

That's when we say, It happens only in India.