List of Mumbai telecom companies

The city has basic landline operators as well as Cell phone operators. Land line numbers are 8 digits long, whereas GSM / CDMA cellular operators are 10 digits.

Landline Operators

*MTNL: The largest and oldest operator in the telephone business in the government owned Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Limited (MTNL). It has 2.5 million suscribers. Its suscriber base is high as it was a monopoly till the late 90's. MTNL phone numbers start with the prefix '2'.

*Tata Indicom (formerly Hughes Telecom): A new entrant, it has garnered about 200,000 subscribers. Tata Indicom is a relatively new player taking over Hughes Telecom in 2002. Its numbers start with '6'.

*Reliance Infocomm: Is the latest entrant in the landline space. Its numbers start with '3'.

*Airtel Broadband and Telephones: This is one of the latest ventures by the bharti group. Its numbers start with '4'. Although coverage is limited, but they are extending it to many parts of the city.

GSM Operators

*Vodafone: The largest GSM operator in Mumbai is Vodafone (formerly Hutch/Orange.MaxTouch). It has a large user base and has a large network. Hutch numbers start with '9819' or '9820' or '9833' or '9999' and are 10 digits long.

*BPL: BPL is a veteran in mobile telephony. However, it is not as large as Hutch. BPL numbers start with '9821' or '9870' and are 10 digits long. BPL has been bought over by the Essar group and was to be integrated into Hutch by March 2006 but the deal failed.

*Airtel: Airtel started operations in Mumbai in 2002-2003. It has rapidly grown in numbers since then. Airtel has the advantage of being a national player. Airtel is owned by Bharti Group. Airtel numbers start with '9892' or '9867'or '9810'or '9967' and are 10 digits long.

*Dolphin: Dolphin is the GSM branch of MTNL. It starts with '9869'or '9969'. It is state-owned.

*Idea: Idea is the GSM branch of Aditya Birla Group. It is yet to start services in mumbai. Mostly will launch their services in August 2008. idea number start with 9702 and are 10 digit long!

CDMA Operators

CDMA operations make use of Wireless Local Loop (WLL). CDMA operations were launched in 2002.

*Reliance Infocomm: Reliance Infocomm is one of the worst mobile operators in India. It has a very little user base and extends to only small towns. Operations started in 2003. Numbers start with '93' and are 10 digits long.
*Tata Indicom: Tata Indicom, like Reliance also offers CDMA connections. Tata now has operations on a national scale. Numbers start with '92' and are 10 digits long.
*Garuda: The pioneer in WLL technology, is run by the state owned MTNL. Operations started in 1999.

Tata Indicom and Reliance also offer Fixed Wireless Telephone Services. The phone connects to the base station on the network using wireless technology, instead of last mile copper wires. This cuts down on the need to dig up roads for laying out copper wires. This significantly reduces installation costs, speeds up the installation time and also reduces public inconvenience through less dug-up roads. It is also possible to connect to the Internet through Fixed Wireless Phones, either through captive broadband services or through dial-up connection to another ISP (Internet Service Provider).