New Delhi, May 4 -- Despite the financial tangle and the lockdown to deal with COVID-19, the telecom industry is leading from the front, keeping India connected and working.

By Rajan S Mathews

Over the last 20 years, the telecom sector has designed, implemented, and maintained in India, one of the largest, most complex and innovative voice and data networks that have been seen anywhere in the world. It supports a customer base of close to 1.2 billion-globally second only to China-with monthly data consumption above that of the USA and China put together and a growing infrastructure base of over 550,000 cell towers and 2.23 million BTSs. This network now provides broadband connectivity to around 650 million of the total subscribers in th...