Telcos Are Not Necessarily Bad, India Is Just a Hard Place to be in Business

The Indian telecom operators are not necessarily bad or not paying attention to the problems of the customers. It is just that India is a very hard place to do business in, especially if you are in the telecom sector. This is because of the sheer size of the market. Forget urban areas for a second, there’s just such a huge population in the rural and backward parts of the country that doesn’t have access to basic network service. To make it worse, the rural market isn’t concentrated in a few states or areas, but is scattered across the nation.

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Telecom players have tried their best to offer seamless services to consumers. But since there’s such a cut throat competition in the market with only four operators (three private and one government owned), India has become a market hard to serve.

Out of the four operators, two aren’t even profitable and one doesn’t even have 4G networks yet. Further, over the last few years, the telecom operators had to fight a long battle with the government over the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues issue.

Yes, the Indian government did announce relief measures, but the damage had already been done. For each operator to offer seamless services in every nook and corner of the country, the kind of investment that is required is unreal. This doesn’t only include the costs of deploying networks, but also then scaling up customer care team, management staff, research and development costs, statutory liabilities, and more.