Telecom Infra In India Not Ready For 5G

By July 2018, India had the world’s second largest internet user base with over 44.6 crore smart phones and 56 crore internet users.

- Shinjini Mukherjee

Although it started with telegrams, the major segments of communications in India today include telephone, internet and television broadcasts. The sector is growing at a very fast rate – almost at twenty times in ten years with one of the lowest tariff rates in the world.

Liberalisation in 1990s

The Indian telecommunication market has undergone a high degree of liberalisation since 1990. As a result of the intense competition it has been forced to face, there has been frequent price cuts and fast growth. It was in 1994 that the Narasimha Rao-led government introduced the policy of ‘Telecommunication for All’, with the objective of reaching out to the villages.

The telecommunications industry, which originated with a base in urban India, soon spread to rural regions, making mobile phones and televisions accessible across the world. As a result, there has been a significant bridging of the rural-urban divide in terms of digital access.