Top Telecom Companies in India: an overview
India's mobile market is served by three private operators – Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea – alongside the state-owned BSNL and MTNL. Reliance Industries reports that Jio's user base has crossed 524 million, including more than 268 million 5G subscribers. Vodafone Idea, formerly Idea Cellular, is a partnership between the Aditya Birla Group and Vodafone, while BSNL was set up on 15 September 2000 through the corporatisation of the Department of Telecom's services.
Behind the operators sits a layer of shared infrastructure. Indus Towers, headquartered in Gurugram, provides passive tower infrastructure and is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel. Fixed-line connectivity comes both from the large operators – Airtel, for example, offers FTTH and fixed-wireless home broadband – and from specialist providers such as Hathway Cable & Datacom in Mumbai and Tata Tele Business Services, which focuses on connectivity and communication solutions for businesses.
India also has a domestic telecom equipment base. Tejas Networks, part of the Tata Group, has designed optical and wireless networking products since 2000, and STL traces its roots to a copper cable unit set up in Aurangabad in 1988 before moving into optical fibre and cable. ITI Limited, a public sector manufacturer under the Department of Telecommunications, and HFCL, which makes optical fibre cable and networking gear, complete the equipment segment.