The ascendency of India as an economic world power

For ages, phone was considered to be a luxury item in India and mainly rich people owned a telephone even until 10 years ago. It has changed a lot in the last 10 years after Indian decision makers realized the value of telephone. India is one of the fastest growing phone markets. The growth has happened mainly in the mobile phone sector. There has been a sharp growth in fixed line phone too. The growth is so impressive that it seems that by 2010, India will have 500 million phones.

IHT reported:

Maran said total phone users in the country would cross 250 million in three or four months as deregulation, greater competition, lower costs and technological advances have spurred growth in the telecommunications industry. Until 1994, the sector was a monopoly of state-run companies.

"Now we are looking at a target of 500 million by 2010," Maran told reporters.

The number of phone users has jumped five times over the past five years, and already, India has the world's third-largest number of phone users, putting it behind only China and the U.S.

So, telecom will become a very big industry for India by 2010. One thing I like to see is that Indian companies can create new content for the telecom industry. It will create a lot of jobs in the coming years.