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So, indeed he has his eyes set on just the right target market, because this is surely the one with tremendous potential. Also, the country with the lowest mobile phone tariffs in the world is all set for yet another tariff war with Sarin announcing that he intends to lower the tariffs further.

Will 3G Do the Trick?

Airtel was banking on the 3G expertise of Vodafone to garner more and more customers. But things have changed, and how! The company that was to be their partner in the 3G era is now one of its biggest rivals to gobble up the pie for the subscriber base. The 3G spectrum allocation too will play a big role in deciding which way the balance will swing in this war.

In the Queue

Three more telecom operators namely Aircel (A 74% stake in Aircel is held by Malaysia's MAXIS TELECOM), Idea Cellular (An Aditya Birla Group company that recently came up with an IPO) AND Spice Telecom (owned by B. K. Modi, this company too has set its eyes on an IPO to raise money) too are looking forward for pan-India presence in the telecom sector.

And one should certainly not underestimate the might of Tata Indicom now that Ratan Tata has decided to take the reigns of the company in his hands.

With all this set to happen, the already hot Indian telecom sector is all set to be set on fire.

But one thing is for sure, irrespective of which company manages to grab the top spot, there will be only one king - He is called CUSTOMER. And if you ask me on which horse should you put the money, I can suggest just one thing -

It is Best to Keep the Money in your Pocket for Now!

Concluded.

* Contributed by: -
Shekhar Arya,
MBA 1st Year,
Department of Management Studies,
Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.