Basic of Communication

1.Concept of Telecommunication

Telecommunication is the assisted transmission of signals over a distance for the purpose
of communication.

• In earlier times, this may have involved the use of smoke signals, drums, semaphore,
flags or heliograph.
• In modern times, telecommunication typically involves the use of electronic devices
such as the telephone, television, radio or computer.
• Early inventors in the field of telecommunication include Alexander Graham Bell,
Guglielmo Marconi and John Logie Baird.
• Telecommunication is an important part of the world economy and the
telecommunication industry's revenue was estimated to be $1.2 trillion in 2006.

2. Key Concepts of Telecommunication

• 2.1 Basic elements
• 2.2 Analogue or digital
• 2.3 Networks
• 2.4 Channels
• 2.5 Modulation

2.1 Basic elements

• A basic telecommunication system consists of three elements:

• a transmitter that takes information and converts it to a signal;
• a transmission medium that carries the signal; and,
• a receiver that receives the signal and converts it back into usable
information.

• For example, in a radio broadcast the broadcast tower is the transmitter, free space
is the transmission medium and the radio is the receiver. Often telecommunication
systems are two-way with a single device acting as both a transmitter and receiver
or transceiver. For example, a mobile phone is a transceiver.

• Telecommunication over a telephone line is called point-to-point communication

because it is between one transmitter and one receiver. Telecommunication
through radio broadcasts is called broadcast communication because it is between
one powerful transmitter and numerous receivers.

2.2 Analogue or digital

• advantage of digital signals over analogue signals Signals can be either analogue
or digital.
• In an analogue signal, the signal is varied continuously with respect to the
information.
 • In a digital signal, the information is encoded as a set of discrete values (for
example ones and zeros).
• During transmission the information contained in analogue signals will be
degraded by noise. Conversely, unless the noise exceeds a certain threshold, the
information contained in digital signals will remain intact.
• Noise resistance represents a key.

2.3 Network
• A network is a collection of transmitters, receivers and transceivers that
communicate with each other.
• Digital networks consist of one or more routers that work together to transmit
information to the correct user.
• An analogue network consists of one or more switches that establish a connection
between two or more users.
• For both types of network, repeaters may be necessary to amplify or recreate the
signal when it is being transmitted over long distances. This is to combat
attenuation that can render the signal indistinguishable from noise.

• 2.4 Channels
• A channel is a division in a transmission medium so that it can be used to send
multiple streams of information.
• For example, a radio station may broadcast at 96.1 MHz while another radio
station may broadcast at 94.5 MHz. In this case, the medium has been divided by
frequency and each channel has received a separate frequency to broadcast on.
• Alternatively, one could allocate each channel a recurring segment of time over
which to broadcast—this is known as time-division multiplexing and is
sometimes used in digital communication.
• The shaping of a signal to convey information is known as modulation.
Modulation can be used to represent a digital message as an analogue waveform.
This is known as keying and several keying techniques exist (these include phase-
shift keying, frequency-shift keying and amplitude-shift keying). Bluetooth, for
example, uses phase-shift keying to exchange information between devices.
•
2.5 Modulation

• Modulation can also be used to transmit the information of analogue signals at higher
frequencies. This is helpful because low-frequency analogue signals cannot be effectively
transmitted over free space. Hence the information from a low-frequency analogue signal must be
superimposed on a higher-frequency signal (known as the carrier wave) before transmission. There
are several different modulation schemes available to achieve this (two of the most basic being
amplitude modulation and frequency modulation).
• An example of this process is a DJ's voice being superimposed on a 96 MHz
carrier wave using frequency modulation (the voice would then be received on a
radio as the channel “96 FM”).
3. Society and telecommunication
 • 3.1 Economic impact
• 3.2 Social impact
• 3.3 Other impacts
3.1 Economic impact

• Microeconomics:
• On the microeconomic scale, companies have used telecommunication to help build global
empires.
• This is self-evident in the case of online retailer Amazon.com but, according to academic
Edward Lenert, even the conventional retailer Wal-Mart has benefited from better
telecommunication infrastructure compared to its competitors.
• In cities throughout the world, home owners use their telephones to organize many home
services ranging from pizza deliveries to electricians. Even relatively poor communities have been
noted to use telecommunication to their advantage. In Bangladesh's Narshingdi district, isolated
villagers use cell phones to speak directly to wholesalers and arrange a better price for their goods.
In Cote d'Ivoire, coffee growers share mobile phones to follow hourly variations in coffee prices
and sell at the best price

3.2 Social impact

• Telecommunication is playing an increasingly important role in social relationships. In
recent years, the popularity of social networking sites has increased dramatically. These sites allow
users to communicate with each other as well as post photographs, events and profiles for others to
see. The profiles can list a person's age, interests, sexuality and relationship status. In this way,
these sites can play important role in everything from organising social engagements to courtship.

• Prior to social networking sites, technologies like SMS and the telephone also had a
significant impact on social interactions. In 2000, market research group Ipsos MORI reported that
81% of 15 to 24 year-old SMS users in the United Kingdom had used the service to coordinate
social arrangements and 42% to flirt

3.3 Other impacts

• In cultural terms, telecommunication has increased the public's ability to access to music
and film. With television, people can watch films they have not seen before in their own home
without having to travel to the video store or cinema. With radio and the internet, people can listen
to music they have not heard before without having to travel to the music store.

• Telecommunication has also transformed the way people receive their news. A survey by
the non-profit Pew Internet and American Life Project found that when just over 3,000 people
living in the United States were asked where they got their news "yesterday", more people said
television or radio than newspapers. The results are summarised in the following table (the
percentages add up to more than 100% because people were able to specify more than one source)
 Telecommunication has had an equally significant impact on advertising. TNS Media Intelligence reported that
in 2007, 58% of advertising expenditure in the United States was spent on mediums that depend upon
telecommunication. The results are summarised in the following table

4 History of telecommunication
• 4.1 Early telecommunications
• 4.2 Telegraph and telephone
• 4.3 Radio and television
• 4.4 Computer networks and the Internet
4.1 Early telecommunications
• In the Middle Ages, chains of beacons were commonly used on hilltops as a means of relaying a
signal. Beacon chains suffered the drawback that they could only pass a single bit of
information, so the meaning of the message such as "the enemy has been sighted" had to
be agreed upon in advance. One notable instance of their use was during the Spanish
Armada, when a beacon chain relayed a signal from Plymouth to London.

• In 1792, Claude Chappe, a French engineer, built the first fixed visual telegraphy system (or
semaphore line) between Lille and Paris.
• However semaphore suffered from the need for skilled operators and expensive towers at intervals of
ten to thirty kilometers (six to nineteen miles).
• As a result of competition from the electrical telegraph, the last commercial line was abandoned in
1880.
• Homing pigeons have occasionally been used through history by different cultures. Pigeon post is
thought to have Persians roots and was used by the Romans to aid their military.
Frontinus said that Julius Ceasar used pigeons as messengers in his conquest of Gaul.
• The Greeks also conveyed the names of the victors at the Olympic Games to various cities using
homing pigeons. In the early 19th century, the Dutch government used the system in Java
and Sumatra. And in 1849, Paul Julius Reuter started a pigeon service to fly stock prices
between Aachen and Brussels, a service that operated for a year until the gap in the
telegraph link was closed.
4.2 Telegraph and telephone

• Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke invented the electric
telegraph in 1837.Also, the first commercial electrical telegraph is purported to
have been constructed by Wheatstone and Cooke and opened on 9 April 1839.
• Both inventors viewed their device as "an improvement to the electromagnetic
telegraph" not as a new device.

• Samuel Morse independently developed a version of the electrical telegraph that

he unsuccessfully demonstrated on 2 September 1837. His code was an important
advance over Wheatstone's signaling method. The first transatlantic telegraph
 cable was successfully completed on 27 July 1866, allowing transatlantic
telecommunication for the first time.
• The conventional telephone was invented independently by Alexander Bell and
Elisha Gray in 1876.
• Antonio Meucci invented the first device that allowed the electrical transmission
of voice over a line in 1849. However Meucci's device was of little practical value
because it relied upon the electrophonic effect and thus required users to place the
receiver in their mouth to “hear” what was being said.
• The first commercial telephone services were set-up in 1878 and 1879 on both
sides of the Atlantic in the cities of New Haven and London
4.3 Radio and television
• In 1832, James Lindsay gave a classroom demonstration of wireless telegraphy to
his students.
• By 1854, he was able to demonstrate a transmission across the Firth of Tay from
Dundee, Scotland to Woodhaven, a distance of two miles (3 km), using water as
the transmission medium.
• In December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi established wireless communication
between St. John's, Newfoundland (Canada) and Poldhu, Cornwall (England),
earning him the 1909 Nobel Prize in physics (which he shared with Karl Braun).
• However small-scale radio communication had already been demonstrated in
1893 by Nikola Tesla in a presentation to the National Electric Light Association
• On 25 March 1925, John Logie Baird was able to demonstrate the transmission of
moving pictures at the London department store Selfridges. Baird's device relied
upon the Nipkow disk and thus became known as the mechanical television.
• It formed the basis of experimental broadcasts done by the British Broadcasting
Corporation beginning 30 September 1929.
• However, for most of the twentieth century televisions depended upon the cathode
ray tube invented by Karl Braun. The first version of such a television to show
promise was produced by Philo Farnsworth and demonstrated to his family on 7
September 1927
4.4 Computer networks and the Internet
• On 11 September 1940, George Stibitz was able to transmit problems using
teletype to his Complex Number Calculator in New York and receive the
computed results back at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
• This configuration of a centralized computer or mainframe with remote dumb
terminals remained popular throughout the 1950s.
• However, it was not until the 1960s that researchers started to investigate packet
switching — a technology that would allow chunks of data to be sent to different
computers without first passing through a centralized mainframe.
• A four-node network emerged on 5 December 1969; this network would become
ARPANET, which by 1981 would consist of 213 nodes.
• ARPANET's development centred around the Request for Comment process and
on 7 April 1969, RFC 1 was published. This process is important because
ARPANET would eventually merge with other networks to form the Internet and
many of the protocols the Internet relies upon today were specified through the
Request for Comment process.
 • In September 1981, RFC 791 introduced the Internet Protocol v4 (IPv4) and RFC
793 introduced the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) — thus creating the
TCP/IP protocol that much of the Internet relies upon today.
• However, not all important developments were made through the Request for
Comment process. Two popular link protocols for local area networks (LANs)
also appeared in the 1970s.
• A patent for the token ring protocol was filed by Olof Soderblom on 29 October
1974 and a paper on the Ethernet protocol was published by Robert Metcalfe and
David Boggs in the July 1976 issue of Communications of the ACM.

5. Modern operation
• 5.1 Telephone
• 5.2 Radio and television
• 5.3 The Internet
• 5.4 Local area networks
5.1 Telephone
• In an analogue telephone network, the caller is connected to the person he wants
to talk to by switches at various telephone exchanges.
• The switches form an electrical connection between the two users and the setting
of these switches is determined electronically when the caller dials the number.
• Once the connection is made, the caller's voice is transformed to an electrical
signal using a small microphone in the caller's handset.
• This electrical signal is then sent through the network to the user at the other end
where it is transformed back into sound by a small speaker in that person's
handset. There is a separate electrical connection that works in reverse, allowing
the users to converse.
• The fixed-line telephones in most residential homes are analogue — that is, the
speaker's voice directly determines the signal's voltage.
• Although short-distance calls may be handled from end-to-end as analogue
signals, increasingly telephone service providers are transparently converting the
signals to digital for transmission before converting them back to analogue for
reception.
• The advantage of this is that digitized voice data can travel side-by-side with data
from the Internet and can be perfectly reproduced in long distance communication
(as opposed to analogue signals that are inevitably impacted by noise).
• Mobile phones have had a significant impact on telephone networks.
• Mobile phone subscriptions now outnumber fixed-line subscriptions in many
markets.
• Sales of mobile phones in 2005 total 816.6 million with that figure being almost
equally shared amongst the markets of Asia/Pacific (204 m), Western Europe
(164 m), CEMEA (Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa) (153.5 m), North
America (148 m) and Latin America (102 m).
• In terms of new subscriptions over the five years from 1999, Africa has outpaced
other markets with 58.2% growth.
 • Increasingly these phones are being serviced by systems where the voice content
is transmitted digitally such as GSM or W-CDMA with many markets choosing to
depreciate analogue systems such as AMPS.
• There have also been dramatic changes in telephone communication behind the
scenes.
• Starting with the operation of TAT-8 in 1988, the 1990s saw the widespread
adoption of systems based on optic fibers.
• The benefit of communicating with optic fibers is that they offer a drastic increase
in data capacity.
• TAT-8 itself was able to carry 10 times as many telephone calls as the last copper
cable laid at that time and today's optic fiber cables are able to carry 25 times as
many telephone calls as TAT-8.
• This increase in data capacity is due to several factors:
• First, optic fibers are physically much smaller than competing
technologies.
• Second, they do not suffer from crosstalk which means several hundred of
them can be easily bundled together in a single cable.
• Lastly, improvements in multiplexing have led to an exponential growth in
the data capacity of a single fiber.
• Assisting communication across many modern optic fiber networks is a protocol
known as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM).
• The ATM protocol allows for the side-by-side data transmission.
• It is suitable for public telephone networks because it establishes a pathway for
data through the network and associates a traffic contract with that pathway. The
traffic contract is essentially an agreement between the client and the network
about how the network is to handle the data; if the network cannot meet the
conditions of the traffic contract it does not accept the connection.
• This is important because telephone calls can negotiate a contract so as to
guarantee themselves a constant bit rate, something that will ensure a caller's
voice is not delayed in parts or cut-off completely.
• There are competitors to ATM, such as Multi protocol Label Switching (MPLS),
that perform a similar task and are expected to supplant ATM in the future.
5.2 Radio and television
• In a broadcast system, a central high-powered broadcast tower transmits a high-
frequency electromagnetic wave to numerous low-powered receivers.
• The high-frequency wave sent by the tower is modulated with a signal containing
visual or audio information.
• The antenna of the receiver is then tuned so as to pick up the high-frequency wave
and a demodulator is used to retrieve the signal containing the visual or audio
information.
• The broadcast signal can be either analogue (signal is varied continuously with
respect to the information) or digital (information is encoded as a set of discrete
values)
• The broadcast media industry is at a critical turning point in its development, with
many countries moving from analogue to digital broadcasts.
• This move is made possible by the production of cheaper, faster and more capable
integrated circuits.
• The chief advantage of digital broadcasts is that they prevent a number of
complaints with traditional analogue broadcasts.
• For television, this includes the elimination of problems such as snowy pictures,
ghosting and other distortion. These occur because of the nature of analogue
transmission, which means that perturbations due to noise will be evident in the
final output.
• Digital transmission overcomes this problem because digital signals are reduced
to discrete values upon reception and hence small perturbations do not affect the
final output.
• In a simplified example, if a binary message 1011 was transmitted with signal
amplitudes [1.0 0.0 1.0 1.0] and received with signal amplitudes [0.9 0.2 1.1 0.9]
it would still decode to the binary message 1011 — a perfect reproduction of what
was sent.
• From this example, a problem with digital transmissions can also be seen in that if
the noise is great enough it can significantly alter the decoded message.
• Using forward error correction a receiver can correct a handful of bit errors in the
resulting message but too much noise will lead to incomprehensible output and
hence a breakdown of the transmission.
• In digital television broadcasting, there are three competing standards that are
likely to be adopted worldwide.
• These are the ATSC, DVB and ISDB standards; the adoption of these standards
thus far is presented in the captioned map.
• All three standards use MPEG-2 for video compression. ATSC uses Dolby Digital
AC-3 for audio compression, ISDB uses Advanced Audio Coding (MPEG-2 Part
7) and DVB has no standard for audio compression but typically uses MPEG-1
Part 3 Layer 2.
• The choice of modulation also varies between the schemes. In digital audio
broadcasting, standards are much more unified with practically all countries
choosing to adopt the Digital Audio Broadcasting standard (also known as the
Eureka 147 standard).
• The exception being the United States which has chosen to adopt HD Radio. HD
Radio, unlike Eureka 147, is based upon a transmission method known as in-band
on-channel transmission that allows digital information to "piggyback" on normal
AM or FM analogue transmissions.
• However, despite the pending switch to digital, analogue receivers still remain
widespread.
• Analogue television is still transmitted in practically all countries. The United
States had hoped to end analogue broadcasts on 31 December 2006; however, this
was recently pushed back to 17 February 2009.
• For analogue television, there are three standards in use (see a map on adoption
here). These are known as PAL, NTSC and SECAM. For analogue radio, the
switch to digital is made more difficult by the fact that analogue receivers are a
fraction of the cost of digital receivers.
 • The choice of modulation for analogue radio is typically between amplitude
modulation (AM) or frequency modulation (FM). To achieve stereo playback, an
amplitude modulated sub carrier is used for stereo FM.

5.3 The Internet

• The Internet is a worldwide network of computers and computer networks that
can communicate with each other using the Internet Protocol.
• Any computer on the Internet has a unique IP address that can be used by other
computers to route information to it.
• Hence, any computer on the Internet can send a message to any other computer
using its IP address. These messages carry with them the originating computer's
IP address allowing for two-way communication.
• In this way, the Internet can be seen as an exchange of messages between
computers.
• As of 2008, an estimated 21.9% of the world population has access to the Internet
with the highest access rates (measured as a percentage of the population) in
North America (73.6%), Oceania/Australia (59.5%) and Europe (48.1%).
• In terms of broadband access, Iceland (26.7%), South Korea (25.4%) and the
Netherlands (25.3%) led the world.

• The Internet works in part because of protocols that govern how the computers
and routers communicate with each other.
• The nature of computer network communication lends itself to a layered approach
where individual protocols in the protocol stack run more-or-less independently of
other protocols.
• This allows lower-level protocols to be customized for the network situation
while not changing the way higher-level protocols operate.
• A practical example of why this is important is because it allows an Internet
browser to run the same code regardless of whether the computer it is running on
is connected to the Internet through an Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection.
• Protocols are often talked about in terms of their place in the OSI reference model
, which emerged in 1983 as the first step in an unsuccessful attempt to build a
universally adopted networking protocol suite.
• For the Internet, the physical medium and data link protocol can vary several
times as packets traverse the globe.
• This is because the Internet places no constraints on what physical medium or
data link protocol is used.
• This leads to the adoption of media and protocols that best suit the local network
situation. In practice, most intercontinental communication will use the
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocol (or a modern equivalent) on top of
optic fiber. This is because for most intercontinental communication the Internet
shares the same infrastructure as the public switched telephone network.

• At the network layer, things become standardized with the Internet Protocol (IP)
being adopted for logical addressing. For the world wide web, these “IP
addresses” are derived from the human readable form using the Domain Name
System (e.g. 72.14.207.99 is derived from www.google.com). At the moment, the
most widely used version of the Internet Protocol is version four but a move to
version six is imminent
• At the transport layer, most communication adopts either the Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) or the User Datagram Protocol (UDP).
 • TCP is used when it is essential every message sent is received by the other
computer where as UDP is used when it is merely desirable.
• With TCP, packets are retransmitted if they are lost and placed in order before
they are presented to higher layers.
• With UDP, packets are not ordered or retransmitted if lost.
• Both TCP and UDP packets carry port numbers with them to specify what
application or process the packet should be handled by.
• Because certain application-level protocols use certain ports, network
administrators can restrict Internet access by blocking the traffic destined for a
particular port.
• Above the transport layer, there are certain protocols that are sometimes used and
loosely fit in the session and presentation layers, most notably the Secure Sockets
Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols.
• These protocols ensure that the data transferred between two parties remains
completely confidential and one or the other is in use when a padlock appears at
the bottom of your web browser.
• Finally, at the application layer, are many of the protocols Internet users would be
familiar with such as HTTP (web browsing), POP3 (e-mail), FTP (file transfer),
IRC (Internet chat), BitTorrent (file sharing) and OSCAR (instant messaging).

5.4 Local area networks

• Despite the growth of the Internet, the characteristics of local area networks
(computer networks that run at most a few kilometres) remain distinct. This is
because networks on this scale do not require all the features associated with
larger networks and are often more cost-effective and efficient without them.
• In the mid-1980s, several protocol suites emerged to fill the gap between the data
link and applications layer of the OSI reference model.
• These were Appletalk, IPX and NetBIOS with the dominant protocol suite during
the early 1990s being IPX due to its popularity with MS-DOS users. TCP/IP
existed at this point but was typically only used by large government and research
facilities.
• As the Internet grew in popularity and a larger percentage of traffic became
Internet-related, local area networks gradually moved towards TCP/IP and today
networks mostly dedicated to TCP/IP traffic are common. The move to TCP/IP
was helped by technologies such as DHCP that allowed TCP/IP clients to
discover their own network address — a functionality that came standard with the
AppleTalk/IPX/NetBIOS protocol suites.

• It is at the data link layer though that most modern local area networks diverge
from the Internet.
• Whereas Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) or Multiprotocol Label Switching
(MPLS) are typical data link protocols for larger networks, Ethernet and Token
Ring are typical data link protocols for local area networks.
• These protocols differ from the former protocols in that they are simpler (e.g. they
omit features such as Quality of Service guarantees) and offer collision
prevention. Both of these differences allow for more economic set-ups.
 • Despite the modest popularity of Token Ring in the 80's and 90's, virtually all
local area networks now use wired or wireless Ethernet.
• At the physical layer, most wired Ethernet implementations use copper twisted-
pair cables (including the common 10BASE-T networks). However, some early
implementations used coaxial cables and some recent implementations (especially
high-speed ones) use optic fibers.
• Where optic fiber is used, the distinction must be made between multi-mode fiber
and single-mode fiber. Multi-mode fiber can be thought of as thicker optical fiber
that is cheaper to manufacture but that suffers from less usable bandwidth and
greater attenuation (i.e. poor long-distance performance).

The Indian telecommunications industry is the world's fastest growing telecommunications

industry,[1][2][3] with 671.69 Million telephone (landlines and mobile) subscribers and 635.51 Million
mobile phone connections as of June 2010 [4] It is also the second largest telecommunication
network in the world in terms of number of wireless connections after China.[5] The Indian Mobile
subscriber base has increased in size by a factor of more than one-hundred since 2001 when the
number of subscribers in the country was approximately 5 million[6]to 635.51 Million in June 2010.
[7]

As the fastest growing telecommunications industry in the world, it is projected that India will have
1.159 billion mobile subscribers by 2013.[8][9][10][11] Furthermore, projections by several leading
global consultancies indicate that the total number of subscribers in India will exceed the total
subscriber count in the China by 2013.[9][8] The industry is expected to reach a size of Rs 344,921
crore (US$ 74.85 billion) by 2012 at a growth rate of over 26 per cent, and generate employment
opportunities for about 10 million people during the same period.[12]According to analysts, the
sector would create direct employment for 2.8 million people and for 7 million indirectly.[12] In
2008-09 the overall telecom equipments revenue in India stood at Rs 136,833 crore (US$ 29.69
billion) during the fiscal, as againstRs 115,382 crore (US$ 25.04 billion) a year before.[13]

Modern growth
A large population, low telephony penetration levels, and a rise in consumers' income and
spending owing to strong economic growth have helped make India the fastest-growing telecom
market in the world. The first operator is the state-owned incumbent BSNL. BSNL was created by
corporatization of the erstwhile DTS (Department of Telecommunication Services), a government
unit responsible for provision of telephony services. Subsequently, after the telecommunication
policies were revised to allow private operators, companies such as Vodafone, Bharti Airtel,Tata
Indicom, Idea Cellular, Aircel and Loop Mobile have entered the space. see major operators in
India. In 2008-09, rural India outpaced urban India in mobile growth rate. Bharti Airtel now is the
largest telecom company in India.

India's mobile phone market is the fastest growing in the world, with companies adding some
20.31 million new customers in March 2010.

The total number of telephones in the country crossed the 671.69 million mark in June 30, 2010.
The overall tele-density has increased to 44.85% in Oct 2009.Telecom Regulatory Authority of
India,Information note to the Press (Press Release No. 61 / 2007), 20 Jun 2007 In the wireless
segment, 19 million subscribers have been added in Dec 2009. The total wireless subscribers
(GSM, CDMA & WLL (F)) base is more than 543.20 million now. The wireline segment subscriber
base stood at 37.06 million with a decline of 0.12 million in Dec 2009.

[edit]History

Telecom in the real sense means transfer of information between two distant points in space. The
popular meaning of telecom always involveselectrical signals and nowadays people exclude
postal or any other raw telecommunication methods from its meaning. Therefore, the history of
Indian telecom can be started with the introduction of telegraph.

[edit]Introduction of telegraph
The postal and telecom sectors had a slow and uneasy start in India. In 1850, the first
experimental electric telegraph Line was started betweenKolkata and Diamond Harbor. In 1851, it
was opened for the British East India Company. The Posts and Telegraphs department occupied
a small corner of the Public Works Department,[14] at that time. Construction of 4,000 miles
(6,400 km) of telegraph lines connecting Kolkata (Calcutta) and Peshawar in the north along
with Agra, Mumbai (Bombay) through Sindwa Ghats, and Chennai in the south, as well
asOotacamund and Bangalore was started in November 1853. Dr. William O'Shaughnessy, who
pioneered telegraph and telephone in India, belonged to the Public Works Department. He
worked towards the development of telecom throughout this period. A separate department was
opened in 1854 when telegraph facilities were opened to the public.

[edit]Introduction of the telephone

In 1880, two telephone companies namely The Oriental Telephone Company Ltd. and The Anglo-
Indian Telephone Company Ltd. approached theGovernment of India to establish telephone
exchanges in India. The permission was refused on the grounds that the establishment of
telephones was a Government monopoly and that the Government itself would undertake the
work. In 1881, the Government later reversed its earlier decision and a licence was granted to
the Oriental Telephone Company Limited of England for opening telephone exchanges
at Kolkata,Mumbai, Chennai (Madras) and Ahmedabad and the first formal telephone service was
established in the country.[15] 28 January 1882, is a Red Letter Day in the history of telephone in
India. On this day Major E. Baring, Member of the Governor General of India's Council declared
open the Telephone Exchange in Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai. The exchange at Kolkata
named "Central Exchange" was opened at third floor of the building at 7, Council House Street.
The Central Telephone Exchange had 93 number of subscribers. Bombay also witnessed the
opening of Telephone Exchange in 1882.

In 1975, the Department of Telecom (DoT) was separated from P&T. DoT was responsible for
telecom services in entire country until 1985 whenMahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL)
was carved out of DoT to run the telecom services of Delhi and Mumbai. In 1990s the telecom
sector was opened up by the Government for private investment as a part of Liberalisation-
Privatization-Globalization policy. Therefore, it became necessary to separate the Government's
policy wing from its operations wing. The Government of India corporatised the operations wing of
DoT on 1 October 2000 and named it as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). Many private
operators, such as Reliance Communications, Tata Indicom, Vodafone, Loop
Mobile, Airtel, Idea etc., successfully entered the high potential Indian telecom market.

[edit]Privatization of telcommunications in India

The Indian government was composed of many factions (parties) which had different ideologies.
Some of them were willing to throw open the market to foreign players (the centrists) and others
wanted the government to regulate infrastructure and restrict the involvement of foreign players.
Due to this political background it was very difficult to bring about liberalization in
telecommunications. When a bill was in parliament a majority vote had to be passed, and such a
majority was difficult to obtain, given to the number of parties having different ideologies.

Liberalization started in 1981 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi signed contracts with Alcatel
CIT of France to merge with the state owned Telecom Company (ITI), in an effort to set up
5,000,000 lines per year. But soon the policy was let down because of political opposition. She
invited Sam Pitroda a US based NRI to set up a Center for Development of Telematics(C-DOT),
however the plan failed due to political reasons. During this period, after the assassination of
Indira Gandhi, under the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi, many public sector organizations were set
up like the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) , VSNL and MTNL. Many technological
developments took place in this regime but still foreign players were not allowed to participate in
the telecommunications business.[18]

The demand for telephones was ever increasing. It was during this period that the P.N Rao led
government introduced the national telecommunications policy [NTP] in 1994 which brought
changes in the following areas: ownership, service and regulation of telecommunications
infrastructure. They were also successful in establishing joint ventures between state owned
telecom companies and international players. But still complete ownership of facilities was
restricted only to the government owned organizations. Foreign firms were eligible to 49% of the
total stake. The multi-nationals were just involved in technology transfer, and not policy making.[18]

During this period, the World Bank and ITU had advised the Indian Government to liberalize long
distance services in order to release the monopoly of the state owned DoT and VSNL; and to
enable competition in the long distance carrier business which would help reduce tariff's and
better the economy of the country. The Rao run government instead liberalized the local services,
taking the opposite political parties into confidence and assuring foreign involvement in the long
distance business after 5 years. The country was divided into 20 telecommunication circles for
basic telephony and 18 circles for mobile services. These circles were divided into category A, B
and C depending on the value of the revenue in each circle. The government threw open the bids
to one private company per circle along with government owned DoT per circle. For cellular
service two service providers were allowed per circle and a 15 years license was given to each
provider. During all these improvements, the government did face oppositions from ITI, DoT,
MTNL, VSNL and other labor unions, but they managed to keep away from all the hurdles.[18]

After 1995 the government set up TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) which reduced
the interference of Government in deciding tariffs and policy making. The DoT opposed this. The
political powers changed in 1999 and the new government under the leadership of Atal Bihari
Vajpayee was more pro-reforms and introduced better liberalization policies. They split DoT in
two- one policy maker and the other service provider (DTS) which was later renamed as BSNL.
The proposal of raising the stake of foreign investors from 49% to 74% was rejected by the
opposite political party and leftist thinkers. Domestic business groups wanted the government to
privatize VSNL. Finally in April 2002, the government decided to cut its stake of 53% to 26% in
VSNL and to throw it open for sale to private enterprises. TATA finally took 25% stake in VSNL.[18]

This was a gateway to many foreign investors to get entry into the Indian Telecom Markets. After
March 2000, the government became more liberal in making policies and issuing licenses to
private operators. The government further reduced license fees for cellular service providers and
increased the allowable stake to 74% for foreign companies. Because of all these factors, the
service fees finally reduced and the call costs were cut greatly enabling every common middle
class family in India to afford a cell phone. Nearly 32 million handsets were sold in India. The data
reveals the real potential for growth of the Indian mobile market.[19]
In March 2008 the total GSM and CDMA mobile subscriber base in the country was 375 million,
which represented a nearly 50% growth when compared with previous year.[20] As the unbranded
Chinese cell phones which do not have International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers
pose a serious security risk to the country, Mobile network operators therefore planned to
suspend the usage of around 30 millionmobile phones (about 8 % of all mobiles in the country) by
30 April.[21] 5–6 years the average monthly subscribers additions were around 0.05 to 0.1 million
only and the total mobile subscribers base in December 2002 stood at 10.5 millions. However,
after a number of proactive initiatives were taken by regulators and licensors, the total number of
mobile subscribers has increased greatly to 617 million subscribers as of May 2010.[22][7]

India has opted for the use of both the GSM (global system for mobile
communications) and CDMA (code-division multiple access) technologies in the mobile sector. In
addition to landline and mobile phones, some of the companies also provide the WLL service.
The mobile tariffs in India have also become lowest in the world. A new mobile connection can be
activated with a monthly commitment of US$0.15 only. In 2005 alone additions increased to
around 2 million per month in the year 2003-04 and 2004-05.[citation needed]

In June 2009, the Government of India banned the import of several mobile phones manufactured
in China citing concerns over quality and the lack of IMEI's which make it difficult for authorities in
India to track the sale and use of such phones.[23] In April 2010, the Government was also
reported to be blocking Indian service providers from purchasing Chinese mobile technology
citing concerns that Chinese hackers could compromise the Indian telecommunications network
during times of national emergency. A series of attacks on Indian
government websites andcomputer networks by suspected Chinese hackers has also made
Indian regulators suspicious with regards to the import of potentially sensitive equipment from
China. The companies reported to be affected by this are Huawei Technologies and ZTE.[24][25][26]

[edit]Telecommunications Regulatory Environment in India

LIRNEasia's Telecommunications Regulatory Environment (TRE) index, which summarizes
stakeholders’ perception on certain TRE dimensions, provides insight into how conducive the
environment is for further development and progress. The most recent survey was conducted in
July 2008 in eight Asian countries, including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives,
Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines. The tool measured seven dimensions: i) market entry; ii)
access to scarce resources; iii) interconnection; iv) tariff regulation; v) anti-competitive practices;
and vi) universal services; vii) quality of service, for the fixed, mobile and broadband sectors.

The results for India, point out to the fact that the stakeholders perceive the TRE to be most
conducive for the mobile sector followed by fixed and then broadband. Other than for Access to
Scarce Resources the fixed sector lags behind the mobile sector. The fixed and mobile sectors
have the highest scores for Tariff Regulation. Market entry also scores well for the mobile sector
as competition is well entrenched with most of the circles with 4-5 mobile service providers. The
broadband sector has the lowest score in the aggregate. The low penetration of broadband of
mere 3.87 against the policy objective of 9 million at then end of 2007 clearly indicates that the
regulatory environment is not very conducive. [27]

[edit]Revenue and growth

The total revenue in the telecom service sector was Rs. 86,720 crore in 2005-06 as against Rs.
71, 674 crore in 2004-2005, registering a growth of 21%. The total investment in the telecom
services sector reached Rs. 200,660 crore in 2005-06, up from Rs. 178,831 crore in the previous
fiscal.[28]

Telecommunication is the lifeline of the rapidly growing Information Technology industry. Internet
subscriber base has risen to 6.94 million in 2005-2006. Out of this 1.35 million
were broadband connections.[29] More than a billion people use the internet globally.

Under the Bharat Nirman Programme, the Government of India will ensure that 66,822 revenue
villages in the country, which have not yet been provided with a Village Public Telephone (VPT),
will be connected. However doubts have been raised about what it would mean for the poor in the
country.[30]

It is difficult to ascertain fully the employment potential of the telecom sector but the enormity of
the opportunities can be gauged from the fact that there were 3.7 million Public Call Offices in
December 2005[31] up from 2.3 million in December 2004.

The value added services (VAS) market within the mobile industry in India has the potential to
grow from $500 million in 2006 to a whopping $10 billion by 2009.[32]

[edit]Telephone

On landlines, intra-circle calls are considered local calls while inter-circle are considered long
distance calls. Currently Government is working to integrate the whole country in one telecom
circle. For long distance calls, the area code prefixed with a zero is dialed first which is then
followed by the number (i.e. To call Delhi, 011 would be dialed first followed by the phone
number). For international calls, "00" must be dialed first followed by the country code, area
code and local phone number. The country code for India is 91.

Telephony Subscribers (Wireless and Landline): 621.28 million (Mar 2010) [33]

Land Lines: 36.96 million (Mar 2010)[33]

Cell phones: 617.53 million (May 2010)[33]

Yearly Cell phone Addition: 178.25 million (Jan-Dec 2009)[33]

Monthly Cell phone Addition: 20.31 million (Mar 2010) [33]

Teledensity: 52.74% (Mar 2010) [33]

Projected Teledensity: 1 billion, 84% of population by 2012.[33]

[edit]Mobile telephones
See also: List of mobile network operators of India

The Mobile telecommunications system in India is the second largest in the world and it was
thrown open to private players in the 1990s. The country is divided into multiple zones, called
circles (roughly along state boundaries). Government and several private players run local and
long distance telephone services. Competition has caused prices to drop and calls across India
are one of the cheapest in the world.[34] The rates are supposed to go down further with new
measures to be taken by the Information Ministry.[35] The mobile service has seen phenomenal
growth since 2000. In September 2004, the number of mobile phone connections have crossed
fixed-line connections. India primarily follows theGSM mobile system, in the 900 MHz band.
Recent operators also operate in the 1800 MHz band. The dominant players are Airtel, Reliance
Infocomm, Vodafone, Idea cellular and BSNL/MTNL. There are many smaller players, with
operations in only a few states. International roamingagreements exist between most operators
and many foreign carriers.

[edit]Landlines

Until recently, only the Government-owned BSNL and MTNL were allowed to provide landline
phone services through copper wire in India withMTNL operating
in Delhi and Mumbai and BSNL servicing all other areas of the country. Private operators such
as Touchtel and Tata Teleservices have entered the market however, the primary focus of their
business is on the mobile-phone sector.[citation needed] Due to the rapid growth of the cellular phone
industry in India, landlines are facing stiff competition from cellular operators. This has forced
landline service providers to become more efficient and improve their quality of service. Landline
connections are now also available on demand, even in high density urban areas. The breakup of
wireline subscriber base in India as of September 2009 is given below[37]

Operator Subscriber base

BSNL 28,446,969
MTNL 3,514,454

Bharti Airtel 2,928,254

Reliance Communications 1,152,237

Tata Teleservices 1,003,261

HFCL Infotel 165,978

Teleservices Ltd 95,181

All India 37,306,334

The list of eight states (including the metros Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai in their respective
states) with largest subscriber base as of September 2009 is given below[37]

State Subscriber base

Maharashtra 5,996,912
Tamil Nadu 3,620,729
Kerala 3,534,211
Uttar Pradesh 2,803,049
Karnataka 2,751,296
Delhi 2,632,225
West Bengal 2,490,253
Andhra Pradesh 2,477,755
[edit]Internet

The total subscriber base for internet users in India is 81 million as of 2009.[38] Internet penetration
in India is one of the lowest in the world which is about 7.0% of the population, compared to other
nations like United States, Japan or South Korea where internet penetration is significantly higher
than in India.[38]
The number of broadband connections in India have seen a continuous growth since the
beginning of 2006. At the end of January 2010, total broadband connections in the country have
reached 8.03 million.

Broadband in India is more expensive as compared to Western Europe/United

Kingdom and United States.[39]

After economic liberalization in 1992, many private ISPs have entered the market, many with their
own local loop and gateway infrastructures. The telecom services market is regulated by
the TRAI and the DoT, which has been known to impose censorship on some websites.

Broadcasting
Radio broadcast stations: AM 153, FM 91, shortwave 68 (1998)

Radios: 116 million (1997)

Television terrestrial broadcast stations: 562 (of which 82 stations have 1 kW or greater
power and 480 stations have less than 1 kW of power) (1997)

Televisions: 110 million (2006)

In India, only the government owned Doordarshan (Door = Distant = Tele, Darshan = Vision) is
allowed to broadcast terrestrial television signals. It initially had one major National channel (DD
National) and a Metro channel in some of the larger cities (also known as DD Metro).

Satellite/Cable television took off during the first Gulf War with CNN. There are no regulations
against ownership of satellite dish antennas, or operation of cable television systems, which led
to an explosion of viewership and channels, led by the Star TV group and Zee TV. Initially
restricted to music and entertainment channels, viewership grew, giving rise to several channels
in regional languages and many in the national language, Hindi. The main news channels
available were CNN and BBC World. In the late 1990s, many current affairs and news channels
sprouted, becoming immensely popular because of the alternative viewpoint they offered
compared to Doordarshan. Some of the notable ones are Aaj Tak (means Till Today, run by
theIndia Today group) and STAR News, CNN-IBN, Times Now, initially run by the NDTV group
and their lead anchor, Prannoy Roy (NDTV now has its own channels, NDTV 24x7, NDTV Profit,
NDTV India and NDTV Imagine).New Delhi TeleVision.

Here is a reasonably comprehensive List of Indian television stations.

[edit]Next generation networks

 In the Next Generation Networks, multiple access networks can connect customers to a core
network based on IP technology. These access networks include fibre optics or coaxial
cable networks connected to fixed locations or customers connected through wi-fi as well as
to 3Gnetworks connected to mobile users. As a result, in the future, it would be impossible to
identify whether the next generation network is a fixed or mobile network and the wireless
access broadband would be used both for fixed and mobile services. It would then be futile to
differentiate between fixed and mobile networks – both fixed and mobile users will access
services through a single core network.

Indian telecom networks are not so intensive as developed country’s telecom networks and
India's teledensity is low only in rural areas. 670,000 route kilometers (419,000 miles) of optical
fibres has been laid in India by the major operators, even in remote areas and the process
continues.BSNL alone, has laid optical fibre to 30,000 Telephone Exchanges out of their 36
Exchanges. Keeping in mind the viability of providing services in rural areas, an attractive solution
appears to be one which offers multiple service facility at low costs. A rural network based on the
extensive optical fibre network, using Internet Protocol and offering a variety of services and the
availability of open platforms for service development, viz. the Next Generation Network, appears
to be an attractive proposition. Fibre network can be easily converted to Next Generation network
and then used for delivering multiple services at cheap cost.

[edit]Mobile Number Portability (MNP)

Number portability: TRAI announced the rules and regulations to be followed for the Mobile
Number Portability in their draft release on 23 September 2009. Mobile Number Portability (MNP)
allows users to retain their numbers, while shifting to a different service provider provided they
follow the guidelines set by TRAI. Users are expected to holding the mobile number with a given
provider for at least 90 days, before they decide to move to the other provider.[50]

As per news reports, Government of India decided to implement MNP from December 31, 2009 in
Metros & category ‘A’ service areas and by March 20, 2010 in rest of the country.

It has been postponed to March 31, 2010 in Metros & category 'A' service areas.
The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than
another standard or usual signal. Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at
different times. Its origin is in radio systems engineering, but became popularized after MediaOne adopted it
as part of a marketing campaign in 1996 to sell their high speed data access. The slogan was "This is
Broadband. This is the Way". Until today, the term has never been formally defined, even though it is used
widely and has been the subject of many policy debates, and the FCC "National Broadband Plan".