The year 2008 will be the beginning of a great leap forward for the Indian telecom industry, which will witness a progression to 500 million lines. The leading public sector service provider BSNL is planning to add 100 million lines starting January 2008. Their private sector competitors Bharti, Reliance, Idea, TATA Telesystems and others have also put forward a 3-year plan of doubling or tripling their subscriber base. Equipment sales are estimated to reach 30 billion dollars in the three-year period. With the arrival of Vodaphone to India, the race to achieve the position of the topmost private sector telco has intensified.

Several new services are on the way. BSNL and MTNL are to add 5,00,000 broadband lines every month. MTNL is also providing IPTV services. Going by the plans of different mobile operators more content is going to be added for mobile phone subscribers, including music downloads, TV downloads and hosting of audio & video clips by one user to another user.

This is the great transformation taking place in the Indian industry, that is offering multiple opportunities for operators, equipment sellers and content providers, billing and messaging software, home entertainment devices, Internet service providers, multilingual voice and text providers.

Convergence India 2008 will thus provide even greater business opportunities than its predecessors.