25 years since the first mobile call: Roller-coaster ride for telecom

It's been through dizzying peaks, troughs, policy U-turns, court battles, brutal competition, and daily controversies

1994: The government projects the market for mobile phones in New Delhi to be 30,000 subscribers. When Essar builds a network of 100,000 subscribers, everyone is taken aback. In Kolkata, Modi Telstra, which launched the first mobile network, was struggling to get 30 subscribers a day. With a charge of Rs 18 a minute for voice calls and Rs 40,000 for a phone, this luxury was only for the well-heeled.

2020: The government projects the  New Delhi subscribers number 53 million, voice calls are free, and India is the largest user of data in the world. A 4G phone costs