India - Communications

Geography - People - Economy - Government - Communications - Transportation - Military - Transnational Issues

India is located Southern Asia, bordering the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, between Burma and Pakistan. The climate is varies from tropical monsoon in south to temperate in north. The terrain is upland plain (Deccan Plateau) in south, flat to rolling plain along the Ganges, deserts in west, Himalayas in north.

Telephones

Telephones - main lines in use : 38.76 million (2008)
Telephones - mobile cellular : 296.08 million (2008)

Telephone system

This entry includes a brief general assessment of the system with details on the domestic and international components. The following terms and abbreviations are used throughout the entry
Telephone system - general assessment : recent deregulation and liberalization of telecommunications laws and policies have prompted rapid growth; local and long distance service provided throughout all regions of the country, with services primarily concentrated in the urban areas; steady improvement is taking place with the recent admission of private and private-public investors, but combined fixed and mobile telephone density remains low at about 30 for each 100 persons nationwide and much lower for persons in rural areas; rapid growth in cellular service with modest declines in fixed lines
Telephone system - domestic : mobile cellular service introduced in 1994 and organized nationwide into four metropolitan areas and 19 telecom circles each with about three private service providers and one state-owned service provider; in recent years significant trunk capacity added in the form of fiber-optic cable and one of the world's largest domestic satellite systems, the Indian National Satellite system (INSAT), with 6 satellites supporting 33,000 very small aperture terminals (VSAT)
Telephone system - international : country code - 91; a number of major international submarine cable systems, including Sea-Me-We-3 with landing sites at Cochin and Mumbai (Bombay), Sea-Me-We-4 with a landing site at Chennai, Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) with a landing site at Mumbai (Bombay), South Africa - Far East (SAFE) with a landing site at Cochin, the i2i cable network linking to Singapore with landing sites at Mumbai (Bombay) and Chennai (Madras), and Tata Indicom linking Singapore and Chennai (Madras), provide a significant increase in the bandwidth available for both voice and data traffic; satellite earth stations - 8 Intelsat (Indian Ocean) and 1 Inmarsat (Indian Ocean region); 9 gateway exchanges operating from Mumbai (Bombay), New Delhi, Kolkata (Calcutta), Chennai (Madras), Jalandhar, Kanpur, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, and Ernakulam (2008)

Radio broadcast stations

This entry includes the total number of AM, FM, and shortwave broadcast stations.
Radio broadcast stations : AM 153, FM 91, shortwave 68 (1998)

Radios

Radios : 116 million (1997)

Television broadcast stations

Television broadcast stations : 562 (1997)

Televisions

Televisions : 63 million (1997)

Internet country code

This entry includes the two-letter codes maintained by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in the ISO 3166 Alpha-2 list and used by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to establish country-coded top-level domains (ccTLDs).
Internet country code : .in

Internet hosts

This entry lists the number of Internet hosts available within a country. An Internet host is a computer connected directly to the Internet; normally an Internet Service Provider's (ISP) computer is a host. Internet users may use either a hard-wired terminal, at an institution with a mainframe computer connected directly to the Internet, or may connect remotely by way of a modem via telephone line, cable, or satellite to the Internet Service Provider's host computer. The number of hosts is one indicator of the extent of Internet connectivity.
Internet hosts : 2.707 million (2008)

Internet Service Providers (ISPs)

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) : 43 (2000)

Internet users

This entry gives the number of users within a country that access the Internet. Statistics vary from country to country and may include users who access the Internet at least several times a week to those who access it only once within a period of several months.
Internet users : 80 million (2007)

More Information about the country

Travel Advisor