India's telecommunications market began to be liberalised in 1992, when the value-added services and metropolitan paging services markets were opened to competition. Since then, additional markets have been liberalised and the sector is now fully-open to competition. Nevertheless, the state-owned domestic fixed-line and domestic and international long-distance carriers have managed to maintain their dominance of the sector, partly due to their entrenched position, partly because they have been able to draw on vast amounts of finance, …showed first 75 words of 725 total…

…showed last 75 words of 725 total…to deploy wireless local loop (WLL) technology to offer "limited mobility" services, much to the chagrin of the cellular operators. Increased competition is now leading to consolidation: the Bharti group has made a number of acquisitions of rivals and increased its minority ownership of certain operations to 100% over the last five years; Hutchison has purchased cellular operators in areas where it was not already active; and, VSNL has acquired successful Internet service provider Dishnet DSL.