Bharti Airtel largest player in the global – Not many people took notice of the company when it got its first mobile license 12 years ago. Not many analysts predicted success for the stock as it ended the first day of trading below its offer price of Rs. 45 per share five years ago. But now the company has crossed the 50 million subscriber mark to become the 1othtelecom industry. And its stock price has crossed Rs. 1000 few days ago.
That growth was due to the telecom boom India witnessed in the last five years. Now that the TRAI has decided to remove the limit on the number of service operators in a circle and award licenses to more players, will the party end for Bharti and co? With no signs of mobile number portability getting implemented soon, it will not be that easy for the new players to make the existing consumers change their current service provider. So there will be tough competition to attract new customers going forward.
Well, on a superficial level it looks like everyone you know has a mobile phone. But India’s teledensity is less than 20% whereas for the developed countries it is more than 60%. And when India reaches that 60% teledensity mark, its subscriber base would be more than 600 million. That’s twice the population of United States.
No wonder US telecom major AT&T is keen to re-enter Indian telecom market. Will we see AT&T painting our cities blue to announce their arrival and to take on another global telecom giantVodafone in the Indian market soon?
One thing that catches every one’s attention in this application for new telecom licenses is the rush of the cash rich Indian realty companies to enter the telecom segment. Parsvnath, DLF, Unitech, Omaxe, Indiabulls, Ansals – this list is definitely long. Will these brick and mortar companies succeed in the mobile world?
Unlike India’s largest private business houses like the Tatas, Birlas or Reliance, DLF‘s K.P. Singh so far has not diversified from his core sector construction. Will India’s third trillionaire think big in telecom now and get ready to fight with the trillionaire no.2 Anil Ambani’s Reliance communications?
Google, which entered the email space years later than Microsoft and Yahoo, proved that first mover advantage wouldn’t last forever. With breakthrough concepts like gigabytes of storage and other innovative services, it gained more popularity and attracted lot of users within a short span of time. Likewise will any of these new players become the market leader in the future?
Will we see a new star in the Indian telecom space soon?
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