India's telecommunication network is the second largest in the world by number of telephone users (both fixed and mobile phones) with over 1.19 billion subscribers as of September 2024. It has one of the lowest call tariffs in the world enabled by multiple large-scale telecom operators and the ensuant hyper-competition between them. India has the world's second largest Internet user-base with over 949.21 million broadband internet subscribers as of September 2024.
Major sectors of the Indian telecommunication industry are the telephone, internet and television broadcast industries in the country which are involved in an ongoing process of developing into a next-generation network, increasingly employing an extensive array of modern network infrastructure such as digital telephone exchanges, network switching subsystems, media gateways and signaling gateways at the core, interconnected by a wide variety of transmission systems using optical fiber or microwave radio relay networks. The access network, which connects the subscriber to the core, is highly diversified with different copper-pair, optical fiber and wireless technologies. Satellite television, a relatively new broadcasting technology has attained significant popularity in the Television segment. The introduction of private FM has boosted radio broadcasting in India. Telecommunication in India has been greatly supported by the Indian National Satellite System system of the country, one of the largest domestic satellite systems in the world. India possesses a diversified communications system, which links all parts of the country by telephone, Internet, radio, television and satellite. India's participation in global telecommunications and spectrum policy discussions is supported by the ITU-APT Foundation of India (IAFI), a sector member of ITU-R, ITU-T, and ITU-D.
