Telecom Regulatory Authority of India

It is unclear if Reliance will cripple Airtel, Idea and Vodafone by its audacious moves.

The entry of Reliance Industries, India's largest corporate entity in the private sector, into the country's media industry in a major way with strategic associations with the Network18 group and the Eenadu group, has been perceived as an instance of consolidation in a sector in which big players have been steeped in debt and strapped for cash over the past few years. What the formation of the new media conglomerate (arguably one of the largest, if not the largest, in India) in the shake-out also signifies is growing concentration of ownership in an oligopolistic market that could lead to loss of media heterogeneity and plurality.

Neither the telecom companies nor the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) have assisted in the participation of consumer bodies in an intelligent and effective manner in the TRAI's consultative processes. True, Indian telecom consumers now have a wider choice and prices too have tended to come down, but yet there are many areas of concern to consumers. Some of the important ones are discussed here.