Opinion | India’s telecom story is not as unique as made out to be

Even as India’s telecom sector reels from a series of body blows, one of the narratives that has gained currency is of a glorious past devastated by hostile forces. In this nostalgia-infused tale, India is the shining outlier that rapidly built telecom capacity over the last 15 years. Its recent setbacks, highlighted with red ink across balance sheets, is the result of local disturbances, anaemic profitability and poor growth.

The reality may be slightly different. The sector was neither an outlier on its way up, nor is it alone in its fall from grace.

The boom in telecommunications across the world is a somewhat recent phenomenon. In 1976, after a century of telephony, there were just 149 million phones in the US. The numbers in the rest of the world were equally unimpressive.