When the government opened up the telecom sector, who would have thought it would soon become a cash cow for the government -- with nearly Rs 18,000 crore (Rs 180 billion) of license fees and other taxes expected in the current year, going up to over Rs 25,000 crore (Rs 250 billion) next year, the sector is proving to be exactly that.
Not surprisingly, given such collections, India's telecom taxes are amongst the highest in the world -- in comparison to China's 0.5-3 per cent, India's telecom tax revenues range between 17 and 26 per cent.
What's even more interesting is that, despite this, India's call charges are amongst the lowest in the world, a result of the intense competition.
All this, of course, refers to the mobile sector, and not to long distance traffic where India's charges are amongst the highest.