India is a land of contrasts, an aspect strikingly highlighted by the dramatic growth of its mobile telephony sector. While on one hand the country is struggling to get its crumbling physical infrastructure in order, wireless communication has taken off – and how.
India today boasts the second largest number of mobile subscribers in the world after China, and much of this growth has occurred in the past 24 to 36 months as a result of a steady decline in tariffs and falling handset costs. Between 2006 and 2010, its mobile phone subscriber base shot up from 150 million to 752 million and more than 20 million subscriptions were added in December 2010 alone.
