It is almost four years since the government licensed Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) in India, yet it feels as though almost nothing much has happened, says a Forbes report. The BWA auctions came right after the nation’s famed 3G auctions; together, they created a stir in the Indian telecom market around the coming data revolution which would channel our economy and its citizens into a new era of social and economic empowerment. Yet, apart from rollouts in a small number of Indian cities, BWA does not seem to have created much visible impact.

Nearly three years on, however, Mobile Number Portability is yet to take off in India. As of October 2013, just 10 per cent of users had sought to port their numbers — not an encouraging sign for a telecom market with nearly a billion subscribers, many of whom frequently opt for new connections. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data released in December reveal that the number of portability requests stood at 104.79 million as of October 2013. Karnataka topped the list with about 12.06 million requests followed by Rajasthan (10.44 million), Andhra Pradesh (9.52 million) and Gujarat (9.09 million).

Telecommunication companies buying airwaves in an Indian auction next month will pay 5 percent of their revenue as an annual fee, a ministerial panel decided, a move that means lower payments for bigger carriers Bharti Airtel and the Indian unit of Vodafone, reports Reuters. The move scraps the 3-8 percent fee range the country currently levies in an effort to coax previously reluctant operators into taking part in India's third attempt at auctioning two frequency bands for billions of dollars.

The number of mobile internet users is going to reach 155 million in India by the end of March 2014, and 185 million by June, maintaining a quarter-on-quarter (Q-o-Q) growth of 20 per cent, according to a report released by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and market research firm IMRB International. The report further mentions that this number was 130 million as of the end of last month, and 110 million as of October 2013, of which 85 million users were from urban India and the rest from rural India.