And then there were 2: India's three-horse telecom race is set to change

Why today's three-horse race might become a duopoly

Just a year after Reliance Jio disrupted the country’s mobile services business, a CEO of a leading Indian telco predicted that the telecom sweepstakes will be divided amongst three private sector players. “We expect that once the battle is over Airtel, Jio and Vodafone-Idea will each have 30-31 per cent revenue market share, with BSNL/MTNL having the rest,” the CEO said.

Last fortnight, however, the cosy prediction of a three-player market, with each controlling roughly similar revenue market shares, was challenged by Reliance Indus­tries chairman Mukesh Ambani. Ambani annou­n­ced at his AGM that Jio would be aiming to acquire 500 million