Introduction
How is the communication system in India? Here, Broadcast media include Doordarshan, India's public TV network, has a monopoly on terrestrial broadcasting and operates about 20 national, regional, and local services; a large and increasing number of privately owned TV stations are distributed by cable and satellite service providers; in 2020, 130 million households paid for cable and satellite television across India and as of 2018, cable and satellite TV offered over 850 TV channels; government controls AM radio with All India Radio operating domestic and external networks; news broadcasts via radio are limited to the All India Radio Network; since 2000, privately owned FM stations have been permitted and their numbers have increased rapidly (2020). What about Telecommuication systems and Internet? Explore this article to find out more.
More about communication in India
| Internet country code | .in |
|---|---|
| Broadband - fixed subscriptions | |
| Total | 22.95 million (2020 est.) |
| Subscriptions per 100 inhabitants | 2 (2020 est.) |
| Internet users | |
| Total | 644 million (2021 est.) |
| Percent of population | 46% (2021 est.) |
| Telecommunication systems | |
| General assessment | India’s telecommunications sector has struggled for growth over the last five years; the sector’s lackluster performance has been in spite of concerted efforts by the government to bolster the underlying infrastructure in a bid to achieve universal coverage; instead, the country’s relatively liberal regulatory environment has encouraged fierce competition and price wars among the operators; State-owned as well as private operators have been forced to seek redress from the government in order to avoid bankruptcy; one particular area of contention has been the billions owed by the operators to the government in the form of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues – usage and licensing fees charged by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) – that have been the subject of long-standing court battles over what should be counted as revenue; the government won that battle in the Supreme Court in 2019, but the financial impairment of that decision has pushed a number of telcos to the brink; add the impact of the Covid-19 crisis in 2020 and 2021 to the mix, and the government had to come to the industry’s rescue by introducing a major reform package in September 2021; along with changes to the definition of AGR with regard to non-telecom revenue, the package includes a four-year moratorium on AGR dues and spectrum instalments; the government has also deferred the spectrum auctions for 5G until later in 2022; mobile spectrum in India is already in short supply in terms of providing the necessary capacity to reach universal coverage, but the cash-strapped MNOs may not yet be in a sufficiently strong financial position for which to make the 5G spectrum auction viable (2022) |
| Domestic | Fixed-line subscriptions 2 per 100 and mobile-cellular at nearly 82 per 100 (2021) |
| International | Country code - 91; a number of major international submarine cable systems, including SEA-ME-WE-3 & 4, AAE-1, BBG, EIG, FALCON, FEA, GBICS, MENA, IMEWE, SEACOM/ Tata TGN-Eurasia, SAFE, WARF, Bharat Lanka Cable System, IOX, Chennai-Andaman & Nicobar Island Cable, SAEx2, Tata TGN-Tata Indicom and i2icn that provide connectivity to Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South East Asia, numerous Indian Ocean islands including Australia ; satellite earth stations - 8 Intelsat (Indian Ocean) and 1 Inmarsat; Indian Ocean region (2022) |
| Telephones - fixed lines | |
| Total subscriptions | 27.45 million (2022 est.) |
| Subscriptions per 100 inhabitants | 2 (2022 est.) |
| Telephones - mobile cellular | |
| Total subscriptions | 1.143 billion (2022 est.) |
| Subscriptions per 100 inhabitants | 81 (2022 est.) |
All Important Facts about India
Want to know more about India? Check all different factbooks for India below.
