Telecommunications: at least a phone in every village

India is home to more than 850 million people, but to very few telephones. For every thousand inhabitants, it has only about eight phones, versus an average of 100 in the developing world, and 600 in developed countries. Here, the author describes how liberalization, in short, while forcing Indian manufacturers to compete against multinationals with state-of-the-art technologies, is opening up opportunities in improving this situation. Indian companies will continue working with the multinationals on joint development, not only as a way of leap-frogging into the state of the art, but to bring the country up to world standards in the availability and quality of its telecommunications.<
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