This policy change was followed up by a large number of other initiatives, including introduction of NTP 1999, that indicated continuing commitment of the Government to liberalise the sector. The various policy changes also reflected Government of India's realisation that the huge funds needed to undertake gigantic and extensive upgrade of telecom infrastructure in all the three segments of wireline, wireless and data services, would require active participation of private sector. The Government also accepted in principle that unless a progressive movement to free market system in telecom sector was ensured, in which market forces and not the Government would decide who would be the winner in each segment, faster roll out of innovative products and services and lower prices to the consumers would not be realised in the near future.

RESPONSES OF NEW ENTRANTS
As soon as the telecom industry opened to private sector investment beginning 1994, a large number of Indian companies entered the segment with varying focus, different strategies and assorted aspirations. Discussed below are ten key strategic dimensions along which these new entrants to the Indian telecom industry have made their initial moves to position themselves in the newly opened sector. Needless to say, such initial choices will facilitate or constrain framing of future strategies and also performances of these companies.

1. Scope - business portfolio
In the telecom sector, there are a number of ways by which a new entrant can develop its business portfolio. The key issue is whether the firm wants to be an integrated or focused player. Reliance Infocom, Bharti Televentures, and Tata Teleservices are positioning themselves as integrated players, though with differing levels of scope and commitment, and with desires to have a presence in basic (both wire line and wireless) as well as national and international long distance. All three companies are laying a fibre optic network across the country to build backbone infrastructure, though the scale at which Reliance is building far exceeds that of, say, Tata Teleservices. Bharti's project to connect Chennai and Singapore through an underground cable shows its commitment to international long distance market. Reliance additionally has eyes on the data services segment which is slated to exceed the voice traffic very soon.
As against this, Hutchison and BPL Mobile see themselves essentially as focused players with strong commitment in the cellular segment. Reliance Infocom, which had entered the telecom sector rather cautiously in mid-nineties through the cellular route in the non-metro segment, came to the conclusion that cellular market was soon going to become a game of diminishing returns and changed its tack to focus on wire line business, where investments required to cover the entire Indian market would be very high (implying that not many companies will be able to make large scale entry). This investment in the wire line backbone can then be leveraged to attack incumbent players in cellular segment through using low cost Code Division Multiple Access ( CDMA) powered Wireless in Local Loop (WLL) limited mobility technology.

2. Scope - Geographical
Number of geographical sectors where a new entrant to the domestic telecom sector wishes to be present is also a key decision. The range of choices available can include local, regional and national. For example, Reliance Infocom, given its big bang approach, plans to cover all the 18 telecom circles in India. As against this, Bharti seems to be focussing on south and north Indian circles, Tata Telesrvices in Andhra Pradesh, while smaller players with limited resources such as HFCL Infotel and Shyam Telecom are concentrating on a single circle.

3. Value Propositions
There are essentially three generic strategies, viz. differentiation, cost leadership and niche, for competing in any industry. This basic concept is applicable in telecom sector too, though pursuing the niche strategy may not be viable, given the fact that the boundaries within and across various segments are increasingly getting blurred, possibility of substitute completion is high (for example Internet telephony can eat into national and international long distance market and vice versa), bulk of the backbone infrastructure to serve basic, national long distance and international long distance are common and scale intensive, benefits of network externalities and positive feed back are real and opportunities for cross subsidising any niche segment with a view to achieving dominance through predatory pricing is feasible.
Given the scale-intensive nature of investments in infrastructure and diversity of information and communication needs of various customer groups - both corporates and individuals - in a variety of data, text, video, audio and animation format, it is reasonable to expect that a strategy comprising economies of scale in operations and offering customised and innovative products and services will be key to future success. Whether a firm is an integrated or focused player in telecom sector, this basic reality can not be ignored. Hutchison and Bharti, which together account for 75% of Indian cellular market, know this too well as can be seen from their frantic effort to grow the number of subscribers and introduce newer products and services based on unique value propositions. Reliance Infocom, which is investing US $5 billion in backbone infrastructure to connect 115 towns and cities and achieve economies scale, has also put in major investments for setting up as many as eight knowledge centres to provide total solution on data services to both corporates and individuals. They have built teams of software professionals who are working in groups to develop innovative products and services in killer applications in such areas as streaming videos, films, news, sports, cartoons etc. While all these applications are aimed to create differential positioning in favour of Reliance Infocom in the minds of customers, an additional value will be that a single strand fibre will make available "always on" broadband service and access to data/ knowledge centre, fixed telephone line and virtual private network. Players like Tata Telesrvices and Bharti Televentures, who are also laying fibre networks, will have advantage of single fibre but the sheer scale of Reliance Infocom will help it achieve better economies of scale vis-à-vis the last mentioned companies.

4. Value chain configuration
Configuration of value chain depends on the generic strategy being pursued and critical capabilities the firm has or proposes to have. If differentiation is the objective, identification of key value propositions around which the proposed differentiation will be achieved and capabilities needed to deliver those, will determine which activities will be performed in-house and which ones will be outsourced but operationally synchronised. For example, Reliance Infocom, to whom a key value proposition will be to provide customers with an opportunity to experience and taste their information products and services, proposes to set up thousands of company owned web stores, where customers can buy mobile phones and accessories, play online games, hold video-conferences and use Internet. For customers who will place orders for phones online, deliveries will be made through courier service. They have also put in place a consumer marketing group to sell the company's products and services as an FMCG company would do. As against this, cell operators such as Hutchison did not put up similar facilities and instead depended more on direct marketing and outdoors. Another area where Reliance Infocom has invested a lot is development of in-house capabilities to introduce various broadband services, as exemplified by their plan to set up knowledge centres across the country and recruiting thousands of software developers.
Similarly, if efficiency in operations is to be achieved, assessment needs to be made about scale and ownership of various value-creating activities. While Reliance Infocom has plans to have the entire backbone infrastructure as well as manufacturing facility for CDMA handset and CDMA compatible PC cards in house (objective being to be present in all segments of industry value chain and appropriate bulk of the industry profit pool), other major players may go for a combination of in-house and shared or networked facilities. In the latter cases, factors such as scale of investments required, fear of under utilisation of capacity, relative priority across various segments of business and risk appetite will influence the decision on actual configuration and scale of investment in the value chain.

5. Technology platform
There exist a large number of technological options in telecom field, each characterised by unique features, complexities, investment requirement, reliability and maintenance need. Care is needed while selecting a particular technology since such decisions will have implications for value creation process as well as on cost incurred to create and deliver the same. Other associated but important issues are problems of lock-ins and switching costs and flexibility to switch over to next generation technologies without wholesale rejection of legacy system. In an industry such as telecom where technology is fast changing, service providers will need to be extra cautious before making irreversible commitment to a particular type or generation of technology. One way to manage the risks associated is to delay the process of freezing the technology till such time technological and regulatory issues become more certain and clear. In India, Reliance Infocom followed this strategy and waited for Government to come up with a policy guideline that allows basic service providers to offer WLL limited mobility. While Reliance Infocom could hedge their technological risk this way, companies like Hutchison got exposed to competition from basic service providers with WLL limited mobility technology particularly in low-priced, standard value proposition segment. The Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) technology - a type of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) cellular network prevalent in Europe, even with General Package Radio Services (GPRS) technology, deployed by "pure" cellular players will have limitations in offering a range of broadband services, which CDMA 2000 1X technology that powers WLL, will be able to provide. The head start, which cellular companies got in wireless, may get slightly dissipated once WLL limited mobility from the basic service providers become fully operational.

6. Strategic Alliance Partner
When faced with the daunting task of mobilising resources, technology and marketing capabilities needed to face formidable competitors having all these inputs, companies lacking these resources to the required degree often enter into strategic alliances with partners having complementary skills, resources and geographical presence, the aim being to improve the chance of success in the unfolding industry. The choice of alliance partners can be critical to future success. A series of strategic alliances, both formal and informal, have already been entered into in the Indian telecom sector by companies who are either constrained by shortages of resources or do not have adequate presence in all geographical markets. For example, Reliance Infocom has entered into a technology agreement with Samsung of South Korea to manufacture CDMA handsets in-house. Tata Teleservices and Hughes Tele.com have entered into an equity arrangement and have further plans to join hands with Bharti. Under this arrangement, the three-company combine will operate in contiguous and complementary circles with full internal co-ordination, thus creating in the process, a third front in wire line business capable of taking on the incumbent public sector BSNL and MTNL (the first front) and Reliance Infocom (the second front). In cellular segment, a three-company alliance called "Idea Cellular" has come up that has a large cellular footprint and consists of cellular businesses of Tatas, Birla and AT&T. It can be seen from all these examples how the choice of strategic alliance partner is a key issue, driven by such need as acquiring knowhow, minimising risks, gaining critical mass and having access to brand names.

7. Legal structure
An important choice for a firm planning to make a big foray into the Indian telecom sector in is the kind of legal structure it should have, to drive its strategy and business plan. For example - should it have separate legal entities for servicing wire line, wireless and data services? Should it have an independent company for running the backend infrastructure and a separate outfit for providing the information and related services? Should the long distance (both national and international) be kept separate from basic services? Questions like these and similar others are very common in telecom sector and the choice will differ from company to company. Each of these options will have different legal, financial and organisational implications and individual companies will need to make decisions in this regard, keeping in view the big picture they have and also the administrative implications. In India, Bharti Televentures is the holding company of all of Bharti's telecom ventures; it has separate legal entities for looking after the long distance and cellular businesses. For Reliance Infocom, the original plan was to have two separate legal entities for wireline and wireless businesses. But realising that such a separation of the two activities will not extract full value of mega investment proposed in information and communication segment, it is now proposed to have one single entity viz. Reliance Infocom, to oversee both the businesses. In case of Tata's telecom business, the involvement in the sector has come through three distinct entities viz. VSNL, Tata Telesevices and Idea Cellular.

8. Mode of Entry
In India, different telecom operators followed different entry strategies for entering different segments of the industry, based on their respective assessment of how the chosen route would provide specific advantages like lowering the cost of and time of entry and access to markets being targeted. Both Hutchison and Bharti entered the Calcutta cellular market through acquiring existing operators, who originally entered the industry through green field project using technical know how from overseas collaborators but could not run the business as they did not have the deep pockets.
In wireline business, Reliance Infocom, Bharti and Tata Teleservices mainly adopted the organic route, the reason being non-availability of acquisition candidates (the incumbent players viz. BSNL and MTNL belong to the public sector) and green field projects. Based on state-of-the-art technology and optical fibre having high bandwidth, the organic route will enable the companies to offer a large number of value-added services and also help them operate the network efficiently. However deviations are also there, as can be seen from Tata Telesrvices' decision to merge its operations with Hughes Tele.Com to enter the Maharashtra market, Reliance Infocom's proposal to acquire the Mumbai-Delhi wire line link owned by Fibre Link Across the Globe (FLAG) as a step to complete the network with an international gateway and Tatas entering the international long distance business through acquiring Government of India's share in public sector VSNL. Reliance is also reported to be considering purchase of Sify, an Internet company, which will give the company access to a large base of corporate customers, besides the Internet gateway license for 15 cities and Net telephony.

9. Timing of entry and roll out
In case of a fast changing industry such as telecom which is characterised by availability of variety of technologies and standards and evolving regulations, timing of entry and roll out is a major strategic decision. Too early an entry involving irreversible commitments may turn out to be wrong while delayed entry may mean lost opportunities. In information goods industry, it is generally perceived that early movers get advantage over late entrants and such advantages are difficult to overcome once these accrue to the first movers. However, the Indian experience in the telecom sector shows that one can not make a categorical statement in this regard. Let us consider the cases of Hutchison and Bharti, which entered the mobile market some 5 to 6 years ago and did get a head start over others as can be seen from the fact that 75% of mobile footprints are controlled by these two companies. Around that time, Reliance Infocom too entered the cellular market but they chose to keep a low profile, as can be derived from their focus on non-metro segment where the going rate for license was far lower than the four metros. Subsequent to the entry of various new players into the cellular market, each making major financial, technological and organisational commitments, the Government made a number of policy changes such as allowing the incumbent public sector unit to offer cellular services without paying the steep license fee, change of fee structure from fixed licensed fee concept to revenue sharing concept and most importantly allowing the basic service providers to offer limited mobility, all of which may put a downward pressure on future profitability of cellular segment. During this period, there were also developments on the technology front and advantages and disadvantages of GSM and CDMA technologies particularly with regard to voice quality, roaming facility and broadband services in relation to cellular services became clearer. With US cellular market increasingly switching over from analogue system to CDMA powered mobile system (vis-à-vis GSM system used in Europe) and suitability of CDMA in offering limited mobility and much better broadband services at a very low cost vs. GSM based mobile services, incumbent firms using GSM technology suddenly started facing the prospect of competition from basic service providers deploying CDMA powered WLL limited mobility. Reliance Infocom, which kept low profile in wire line business even in late nineties, concluded that standalone cellular business would soon become unprofitable and took a rather late decision to go overdrive in wireline business, once the Government also agreed in principle to allow basic service providers to offer limited mobility. Reliance Infocom could effect this change of focus, because it understood that the last words in either regulations or technology were not told in mid-nineties and hence the decision they took at that time, of having just a toehold in the cellular segment, the aim being to have an option on the future. Their planned delay in taking the full scale plunge in the telecom sector was no doubt strategic.
The timing can also be crucial from another point of view. European experience showed that wire line companies there put up massive capacity hoping that consumers will go full hog for broadband services. This was not easy to come by and as a result many of these companies with low asset utilisation are currently facing bankruptcy, thanks to large component of debt in their capital structure. The experience of South Korea, which has ten times more broadband penetration than, say Germany or France, showed that certain prerequisites are needed to be fulfilled before broadband really takes off. All these experiences were available only by end 2000 and when, in late nineties, Reliance Infocom postponed its decision to actually commit capital in wireline and broadband services till late 2000, it really aimed in hedging its risk in the business, which its counterpart in Europe could not fully comprehend in early 90s when they went for major investments
A third reason as to why timing can be crucial is its impact on cost of inputs. It is an established fact that cost of inputs required for executing any project can be brought down significantly if the project is taken up during periods of recession when most suppliers are underutilised and bargaining power of customers are high. Reliance Infocom decided to put up the massive investment of US $ 5billion during 2000-02 when most advanced economies were under severe recession giving the company an opportunity to do hard bargaining with suppliers and lower effective cost of the project. As against this, cellular operators in India put up their investments in mid nineties, when suppliers were having high capacity utilisation in general - thanks to booming world economy, implying comparatively higher project cost incurred by such cellular operators.

10. Pace of execution
The speed at which a project will be executed is a major decision that can have important cost implications. It is well known that longer the execution time more will be the overall cost of the project. The delay will also imply loss of opportunity to use the investments being made. In case of the telecom industry, where investments involved are very high and there is also the necessity to delay consciously the actual commencement of project execution for reasons discussed in the previous section, the importance of high speed execution cannot be overemphasised. Reliance Group, which is known for its rapid project execution capabilities (they had put up a 30 million ton grass root refinery involving an investment of US$ 4 billion in just 14 months in late 90's) could afford to delay taking a final decision on technology and project scope because of their confidence and capability to execute any mega project rapidly. Other wireline companies such as Bharti Televentures, Tata Telesrvices and even the incumbent BSNL are progressively laying fibre in chosen geographical pockets, but the decision taken by Reliance Infocom to accelerate the execution work not just in terms of laying the fibre but also putting up data centres and software development facility is likely to help the company position itself more strategically than other players.

BASIS FOR MAKING SPECIFIC CHOICES
Two important factors that seemed to have influenced the decisions made by Indian telcos along the strategic dimensions discussed above were their (a) point of view on future industry evolution and strategic intent, and (b) perception on capabilities they possessed (or proposed to possess).
The main players, referred in this article, were driven by their respective perceptions in the just mentioned two areas and the differences in such
perceptions can be clearly seen in the way initial moves have been rolled out. While it is too early to predict the outcome of the strategies being pursued by the new entrants,identification of the ten strategic dimensions and the two factors that influence specific choices along these ten dimensions should help both academicians and practising managers in developing a framework for conceptualising the entry strategy to Indian telecom sector.