India’s inspiration machine and former President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam had shared his vision of Indian tele-density reaching over 75 percent well before the year 2020. Keeping alive his expectations, the urban tele-density has reached the 100 percent landmark and the rural tele-density is slowly shooting up. The overall tele-density has increased to 58.17 percent in July 2010.

Indian telecom industry is in a rapid expansion phase with more operators and subscribers adding up in a fast and steady rhythm. Given the fact that most of the providers offer free connections, the subscriber base is shooting up each day. The competition between the operators has intensified to a state that they are actually competing to slash prices.

The penetration of mobile connections in India has been skyrocketing in the last couple of years. A Gartner study predicts that mobile connections in India will cross 660 million, growing at 27.3 percent in the current year. The revenue from mobile services is expected to reach $19.8 billion by the end of the year, up by 19.7 percent from last year. The customer base has increased tenfold from 46 million in 2001 to 470 million in 2010. The Indian mobile industry is expected to score a double-digit growth rate till the end of 2012 and the penetration of mobile connections is projected to reach 72.5 percent by 2012 and 82 percent by 2014.

Rural market is the center of focus for the operators now. By introducing more low-priced handsets, every provider is trying to made inroads to the villages and expand their reach to the remote areas.

Bharti Airtel tops the list of telecom service providers in terms of revenues with Rs. 38,800 crore. Although saw a dip in its revenue for the second consecutive year, BSNL still holds the second spot with revenue of Rs. 30,240 crore. Vodafone becomes the third largest player with revenue of Rs. 23,200 crore. Reliance Communications recorded revenue of Rs 22,130 crore coming at the fourth place. The fifth place is held by Aditya Birla Group’s Idea Cellular with revenue of Rs. 11,390 crore.