Telecom
...Company Limited” and “The Anglo-Indian Telephone Company Limited” had moved to the Government of India with a vision to establish Telephone Exchanges all across the country. Initially the Government hesitated to give permission but on the later period it had approved to go for the mission and finally on 28th January 1882 the license was granted to the Oriental Telephone Company Limited of England to open Telephone Exchanges at Kolkata, Mumbai and Ahmadabad.
The opening of exchanges was followed by further innovations and improvements in all sections of the telecom industry. However, while telephones were introduced in the major towns and cities across the country during the British period, total number of telephones in India in 1948 were merely 80,000. The growth was negligible even after independence and the telephone was used as a status symbol by the rich despite being an extremely essential device of public utility. This sluggish rate of growth continued till 1991 when the number of telephones was 5.07 million. The period post 1975 saw resurgence in the India Telecom Market by virtue of a series of fruitful decisions initiated by the Government which included:
• The separation of Department of Telecom (DoT) from Post and Telegraph (P&T) in 1975.
• The formation of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) out of DoT to provide telecom services exclusively to Delhi and Mumbai.
• In the 1990s, the telecom sector was opened up by the Government for private investment as a part of Liberalization-Privatization-Globalization Policy.
• On 1st October, 2000, the Government corporatized its operations wing under the name of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).
To top it all, the introduction of mobile communication is acceptably the biggest success story achieved by the telecom industry. The Indian telecom sector can be broadly classified...
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