Near-duopolistic concentration in India's broadband market has implications for consumers and competition. Critically analyse the role of the regulator.

India had 1,101.21 million broadband subscribers in August 2026, but the top five providers held 98.58% of them. Jio (538.03 million) and Airtel (386.39 million) together held about 84% [1]. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), set up under the TRAI Act, 1997 [2], has served consumers well on price and switching. It has fewer tools to keep competition alive.

Implications of concentration

• Consumers (gains): large operators can spread costs over many users, which has brought cheap data and rapid 4G/5G rollout.
• Consumers (risks): operators have more power to raise prices. Wireless ARPU (average revenue per user) rose 7.15% in a year to ₹196.04 [3]. Rural tele-density is just 61.12% against 155% in cities [1], and higher prices hurt most where access is already low.
• Competition: Vodafone Idea (130.88 million) and BSNL (27.82 million) are falling behind [1]. About 41% of the telecom budget goes to reviving BSNL/MTNL, yet both still make losses [4].
• Signs of competition that remain: there were 15.83 million portability requests in one month [1]. Fixed-wired broadband is less concentrated, with the top five holding 71.66%, and regional ISPs such as Kerala Vision are in that list [1].

Role of TRAI: strengths

• It has powers over tariffs, quality of service and interconnection [2].
• Mobile Number Portability makes it easy for users to switch, which keeps some pressure on operators [1].
• Transparency: it publishes monthly counts of active users (peak VLR) and tele-density without M2M [1], and quarterly ARPU data [3].

Limitations

• On licensing and spectrum, TRAI can only recommend; the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) decides [2].
• TRAI regulates conduct but cannot change market structure. Mergers and abuse of dominance fall under the Competition Commission of India, and the two roles overlap.
• It depends on data reported by the operators themselves [1].
• It has no fix for BSNL's weakness, since that is a problem of government funding [4].

Way forward

• A formal TRAI–CCI consultation protocol for dominance cases.
• Closer scrutiny of tariff increases in markets with few competitors.
• Support new entry through Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) (the fastest-growing segment at 2.68% [1]), satellite broadband and local ISPs.
• Publish active-user data split by rural and urban areas.

In short, concentration has made data cheap but reduced choice, and TRAI's powers are designed for consumer protection more than for keeping markets competitive. Giving TRAI a stronger, forward-looking competition role, together with a working public operator, would support affordable, universal connectivity under Digital India and SDG 9.c.