Why India needs telecom champions

India is one of the world’s largest telecom markets, with nearly a billion internet users, and one of the fastest-growing digital economies. Yet it remains the only major power without a globally dominant telecom equipment manufacturer of its own. This absence is now becoming a strategic vulnerability and an impediment to safeguarding our telecom security and sovereignty.

The Atmanirbhar Bharat vision rightly seeks to ensure sovereignty across critical domains—energy, semiconductors, and most importantly, data. But pipelines that move data across our digital devices to servers and back are part of our telecom infra and are as critical to India’s long-term interests as our data. In 2026, owning the data but not the telecom infrastructure is like owning the gold but renting the armoured truck from a rival who has the keys.