Telcos in India with Marketshare and footprint analytics

Indian Telco space has been the largest in terms of subscriber base and market depth. India has been one of the smarter spaces for Telcos to see wider adaptation of Next Gen and new age solution. India has been a torch bearer on mass scale next gen technology Liz;

• CDMA implementation and its cheaper alternative to GSM dominance.
• 2.5G under the back bone support from Docomo in the era of 2G.
• Move to fasted 3G implementation
• Fastest movement to 4G, along with quick customer on boarding and same day activation.
• 5G recently concluded spectrum bids with most players bidding circle, new entrants like Adani opting for industrial use.

List of present Telcos.

	Operator	Logo	Subscribers (crores)	Active Users(crores)	Technology	Ownership
1	Jio		41.596	38.217	850(B5)/1800(B3)/2300(B40) LTE, TD-LTE, FD-LTE, LTE-A VoLTE, ViLTE, VoWiFi WiFi VoNR	Jio Platforms
2	Airtel		36.348	35.617	GSM – 900/1800 (EDGE), GPRS 900(B8)/1800(B3)/2100(B1)/2300(B40) LTE, TD-LTE, FD-LTE, LTE-A 5G NR, LTE OpenRAN , 3500 MHz, 28 GHz,700 MHz VoLTE, ViLTE, VoWiFi WiFi VoNR	Bharti Airtel Limited
3	Vi		25.510	21.692	GSM – 900/1800 (EDGE), GPRS 3G - 2100 UMTS HSDPA 900(B8)/1800(B3)/2100(B1)/2300(B40)/2500(B41) LTE, TD-LTE, FD-LTE, LTE-A 5G NR, LTE Massive MIMO, ADvanced NR ,26 GHz, 3.5 GHz, UltraWide(UW)-mmWave VoLTE, ViLTE, VoWiFi WiFi VoNR	Government of India (35.8%) Vodafone Group (28.5%) Aditya Birla Group (17.80%) Private equity (17.90%)
4	BSNL		11.070	5.727	GSM – 900/1800 (EDGE), GPRS 3G 2100 Mhz (PAN India), 3G+ HSPA, HSDPA 850(B5)/2100(B1)/2500(B41) LTE, TD-LTE, FD-LTE, LTE-A VoLTE 5G NR, 600 MHz band; 40 MHz in the 3600-3670 MHz band, and 400 MHz in 24 GHz band WiMAX, WiFi, VoNR (Tested in IIT Madras)	Government of India

Defunct operators

Operator	Started Operations	Ceased Operations	Fate
Telstra	1990	2000	Merged into Axiata Spice Communications
Escotel	1996	2004	Merged into Idea Cellular
Hutch Essar	1999	2007	Made by Vodafone Group and Essar Group
Axiata Spice Communications	1992	2008	Merged into Idea Cellular
S Tel	2008	2012	License cancelled by the Supreme Court of India
Etisalat	2010	2012	License cancelled by the Supreme Court of India
BPL Mobile (Loop Mobile)	1995	2014	Ceased operations after expiration of license
Virgin Mobile India, T24 Mobile	2009	2015	Merged into Tata Docomo
Videocon Telecom	2010	2016	Shut down following sale of spectrum to Bharti Airtel
MTS India	2009	2017	Acquired by Reliance Communications
Idea Cellular	2002	2018	Merged with Vodafone India to form Vi
Vodafone India	2011	2018	Merged with Idea Cellular to form Vi
Aircel	1999	2018	Bankrupt
Telenor India	2009	2018	Acquired by Bharti Airtel
Tata Docomo	2009	2019	Acquired by Bharti Airtel
Reliance Communications	2004	2019	Bankrupt
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited	1986	2020	Subsidiary of BSNL until merger is complete

Customer Operator wise

	Operator	Subscribers (crores)	Ownership
1	Jio	42.223	Jio Platforms
2	Airtel	22.212	Bharti Airtel
3	Vi	12.298	Government of India Vodafone Idea Limited
4	BSNL	2.525	Government of India
5	ACT	0.213	Atria Convergence

The following table shows the top 5 wired broadband service providers in India by total subscriber base as of 31 july 2022.

Rank	Provider	Subscribers (lakh)	Ownership
1	Reliance Jio	62.7	Jio Platforms
2	Airtel	49.9	Bharti Airtel Limited
3	BSNL	38.5	Government of India
4	ACT	21.3	Atria Convergence
5	Hathway	11.3	Reliance Industries Limited

The following table shows the top 5 wireless broadband service providers in India by total subscriber base as of 31 july 2022.

Rank	Provider	Subscribers (crores)	Ownership
1	Reliance Jio	41.596	Jio Platforms
2	Airtel	21.713	Bharti Airtel Limited
3	Vi	12.297	Government of India Vodafone Idea Limited
4	BSNL	2.139	Government of India
5	Intech Online Pvt Ltd	0.022

Notes

• Broadband: Internet access with a minimum capacity of greater or equal 512 Kbit/s in one or both directions.
• Narrowband: Internet access with a capacity of less than 512 Kbit/s in one or both directions.

Other notable ISPs[edit]

Provider	Ownership
Alliance Broadband
APSFL	Government of Andhra Pradesh
Asianet Broadband	Rajan Raheja Group
DEN Networks	Reliance Industries
Kerala Vision	KCCL
Muft Internet	Muft Internet
RailTel Corporation of India	Government of India
Sify	Sify Group
Spectranet	Shyam Telecom Limited
Tata Communications	Tata Group
Tata Play	Tata Sons (60%) Walt Disney Company (30%) Temasek Holdings (10%)

For enterprise/wholesale only

Provider	Ownership
CtrlS Datacenters Ltd	CtrlS Labs Limited
ERNET	Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
GAILTEL	Government of India
National Knowledge Network (for educational institutions only)	Government of India
PowerGrid	Government of India
Tulip Telecom	Tulip Enterprises
Muft Internet	Muft Internet

Notes

1. On 28 February 2018 Aircel filed for bankruptcy with NCLT and a substantial number of customers have migrated to other service providers due to closing down of most of the consumer services.
2. The services of Telenor India have been merged with Airtel on 14 May 2018.
3. On 31 August 2018, Vodafone India has been merged with Idea Cellular to form Vi.
4. The consumer mobile businesses of Tata Docomo, Tata Teleservices (TTSL) and Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Limited (TTML) have been merged into Bharti Airtel from 1 July 2019.

Telecom R&D firms

Name	Headquarters	Type
Beetel	Gurgaon	private
C-DOT	New Delhi	Government Organization
EXICOM	Gurgaon	private
HTL Ltd.	Chennai	partially state-owned
HFCL	New Delhi	private
Nexge Technologies	Chennai	private
MYMO Wireless	Bangalore	private
Sasken Technologies	Bangalore	private
Tejas Networks	Bangalore	private
United Telecoms Limited	Bangalore	Government of India enterprise
Vihaan Networks	Gurgaon	private
WiSig Networks	Hyderabad	private
Sterlite Technologies	Pune	private

3G Technology through the lens of CDMA and its Codes

3G Technology through the lens of CDMA and its Codes

"It's all about being one in a billion"

What is CDMA?

CDMA stands for "Code Division Multiple Access." CDMA is a wireless transmission technology that was developed during World War II by the English allies to avoid having their transmissions jammed. After the war ended, Qualcomm patented the technology and made it commercially available as a digital cellular technology. Now CDMA is a popular communications method used by many cell phone companies.

Unlike the GSM and TDMA technologies, CDMA transmits over the entire frequency range available. It does not assign a specific frequency to each user on the communications network. This method, called multiplexing, is what made the transmissions difficult to jam during World War II. Because CDMA does not limit each user's frequency range, there is more bandwidth available. This allows more users to communicate on the same network at one time than if each user was allotted a specific frequency range.

Because CDMA is a digital technology, analog audio signals must be digitized before being transmitted on the network. CDMA is used by 2G and 3G wireless communications and typically operates in the frequency range of 800 MHz to 1.9 GHz.

CDMA relies heavily on Codes so 3G also relies heavily on these codes. But what are these codes and why do we use them?

CDMA provides up to 10 times the calling capacity of earlier analog networks (AMPS) and up to five times the capacity of GSM systems.

3G spectrum

We have already seen that 3G is a spread spectrum technology. One user's data can be transmitted through multiple frequencies within a spectrum. The same happens with all of the users. In other words, with 3G, the spectrum is really a chaos of data fragments (frames or packets) and being unique is of utmost importance. This uniqueness is achieved by a string of 0s and 1s called a "Code".

Each user is provided a different code while performing wireless communication. These codes need to be unique to make sure that no two users get cross connection and the process may fail. Such codes are majorly divided into two categories:

1.      Pseudo Random Codes

2.      Mutually Orthogonal codes

Let's look at both of them one by one

1. Mutually Orthogonal Codes

Let's jump to high school mathematics a little. Vectors can be represented as sequence of numbers in a matrix. And two vectors whose dot product (SOP of corresponding numbers) is 0 are called mutually Orthogonal. In case of CDMA, generally a base station distributes 64 bit long mutually Orthogonal codes to the users and packs their data along with the code. So, every time the user receives a data-stream or packet it performs dot product of the initial 64 bits with its own code and if the result is 0, it ignores the information. That's how CDMA grants time and frequency to the users and separates them with codes instead. Science community calls these orthogonal vectors Walsh codes whereas communication committee sometimes also refers to them as chip codes.

 2. Pseudo Random Codes

Sometimes the users keep moving too much in which case they may keep hopping between two or more base stations. It becomes difficult for base stations to manage a common Orthogonal code so such users are treated with a different approach. 

They are provided a permanent (as long as the call lasts) PN (Pseudo Noise) or Pseudo Random Codes. The code is provided to respective base stations and the call remains intact. Such an arrangement is also useful when (rarely) base station runs out of mutually Orthogonal codes under high cellular traffic.

Base stations generate random code by adding difficult to predict intended noise in a smaller code signal. Such code seems random but is actually deterministic (pseudo). So, it won't be repeated by the BSc. One such popular PR or PN code is Gold code. Under critical applications like Military operations, Orthogonal codes are also replaced by PN codes.