Telecom Saga- The Indian Chapter

The world has seen a revolution in the field of communications in the past decade and a half. There has been a dramatic change in the way we communicate with each other. Thanks to the glorious telecom world! The thumb rule is, as Idea Cellular rightly puts it: "Talk when you walk". Services such as Internet, 2G, 3G packet services on mobile, VoIP, LTE, Video calling have proved to be a boon to the ever increasing demands of fast, effective, reliable and inexpensive communication.

Not very long time ago, a person seen with a mobile in India was considered to be rich, elusive and privileged. The scenario has completely changed now with many operators pushing into the promising Indian market and little GSM/EDGE penetration. The tug of war between the operators helped by some resilient TRAI regulations and entry of new telcos has more than helped common man who now affords the services as they fall in his range of expenditure.

The innovative practices followed by Bharti and Vodafone, and acquisitions by Idea Cellular righteously placed them as the top three Indian operators in GSM. Reliance and Tata established their own supremacy in the field of CDMA. People were especially lured into some attractive schemes these companies had in offer.

A promising industry, lucrative market, ever rising revenues! Those who dared to be innovative received the favor! What went wrong then? The debacle that followed left everyone shocked and pushed the businesses into disarray. The 2G spectrum scam is perhaps one of the biggest scam in the history of business in India. A loss of over Rs 1 lakh crore!!! Mind you, some people might find it difficult to count the number of zeroes in that figure! Such was the intensity of this misfortune! The spectrum was served on first come first served basis instead of the auctioning process that has resulted in this aftermath.

Who bears the brunt of it all??? The telcos themselves! 122 2G licences cancelled! That's no fluke! Such a number of licences could actually cover the whole of Europe or may be more! Many of the operators lost their PAN-India footprint. The likes of Etisalat, Uninor, SSTEL, Loop have already started packing up! Having invested crores into infrastructure and equipment, this menace has left an ever lasting blur on Indian telecom market! The greed of few and ignorance of some privileged is all that was responsible! Having survived a tough 1 year that saw the launch of Mobile Number Portability, which was another challenge to establish in already live running networks, the problems only seem to mount!

Things are only going to get worse if the situation is not brought under control by the Center. There are chances of unemployment nonetheless with people finding difficult to move to other domains as the experience gathered in this sector is entirely different from the likes of IT, Banking, Power, Software Development & Testing.

What turns out! Only time will tell!