Indian Telecom Industry Experiencing new wave of Cheap International Calling

The Indian telecom industry is one of the fastest growing industry in the world, thanks to the ever growing potential in terms of adding new users. For the domestic and foreign players, India remain still most attractive telecom market due to still it is one the lowest penetrated markets. The major sectors of Indian telecom industry are telephony, internet, data centers and broadcasting. Among which telephony, which further categorised into fixed line telephony and mobile telephony and the Internet usage have shown tremendous potential and driving the growth of industry.

During last decade the telecom subscriber base expanded substantially in India. The telephone subscriber base reached 1,000 million in last May, 2015 among which the mobile segment holds more than 95% and rest lies with with fixed line connections, making India second-largest telecommunication market and third highest number of internet users in the world.

With the advent of technological revolution, the communication not just within but cross border also become very convenient and cheap, particularly the voice communication. The new breed of telecom companies, using VoIP technology has made possible; very cheap international calls to India. Voice over Internet Protocol, termed in short as ‘VoIP’ is a group of technologies for delivery of audio and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks such as internet. The introduction of mass market VoIP services that utilize existing broadband internet connections was major development in 2004, by which the users can make and receive phone calls in similar manner as they do via public switched telephone network. VoIP is now very well associated with internet telephony, IP telephony and broadband telephony. Now a day, VoIP is available on almost all the smartphones, personal computers, and on any device on which Internet access is possible. Calls and Text messages can be sent over 3G/4G or Wi-Fi network. These revolutionary telecom technologies paved the way for altering the scenario of how Indians communicate cross border within just few years.

Many full-service VoIP companies provide inbound and outbound service with direct inbound dialing. Majority of such companies offer unlimited domestic calling for a flat monthly subscription fee. This sometimes includes international calls to certain countries. The key internet telephony players such as Skype and TringMe provide cheap VoIP calls to India among which Skype is popular for video calling whereas TringMe is popular for making HD quality international calls to mobile and landline numbers from web browser and mobile apps, offers lowest international calling rate in the industry. Expats, travellers and businesses are using such VoIP services to make cheap calls to India from USA, UK, Australia, Canada, UAE and many more nations to save in international calling cost.

Domestic Indian telecom market is expected to grow further due to increased penetration in rural market and increasing revenues from the non voice services. Also it is estimated that telecom penetration in rural india is expected to increase up to 70% by 2017 from 46% last year. However the low rate of broadband penetration in rural area may hinder the growth of internet usage and related services. However the other contributing factors remain ‘middle class’ of India with growing disposable income which triggered demand for mobile phones and internet usage. Also added, the handset manufacturing companies have launched affordable models of smart phones. From the government support front, the favourable policy remain crucial for the industry development. The FDI limit for Indian telecom sector increased to 100% from 74% and also in the beginning of current year the Indian government has recommended the reduction in license fees of telecom by 6% for the operators against current fees of 8%.