The Indian Information Technology and industry accounts for a 5.9% of the country's GDP and export earnings as of 2009, while providing employment to a significant number of its tertiary sector workforce. More than 2.3 million people are employed in the sector either directly or indirectly, making it one of the biggest job creators in India and a mainstay of the national economy.
In March 2009, annual revenues from outsourcing operations in India amounted to US$60 billion and this is expected to increase to US$225 billion by 2020. The most prominent IT hub is IT capital Bangalore. The other emerging destinations are Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, NCR and Kolkata. Technically proficient immigrants from India sought jobs in the western world from the 1950s onwards as India's education system produced more engineers than its industry could absorb. India's growing stature in the information age enabled it to form close ties with both the United States of America and the European Union.
Each year India produces roughly 800,000 engineers in the country, out of them 25% to 30% possess both technical competency and English language skills, although 10% of India's population can speak in English. India has developed a number of outsourcing companies specializing in customer support via Internet or telephone connections.
By 2009, India also has a total of 37,160,000 telephone lines in use, a total of 506,040,000 mobile phone connections, a total of 81,000,000 Internet users—comprising 7.0% of the country's population, and 7,570,000 people in the country have access to broadband Internet— making it the 12th largest country in the world in terms of broadband Internet users. Total fixed-line and wireless subscribers reached 543.20 million as of November, 2009.
The Indian telecommunication industry, with about 525 million mobile phone connections (Dec 2009), is the third largest telecommunication network in the world and the second largest in terms of number of wireless connections. The Indian telecom industry is one of the fastest growing in the world and is projected that India
will have 'billion plus' mobile users by 2015. Projection by several leading global consultancies is that India’s telecom network will overtake China’s in the next 10 years. For the past decade or so, telecommunication activities have gained momentum in India. Efforts have been made from both governmental and non-governmental platforms to enhance the infrastructure. The idea is to help modern telecommunication technologies to serve all segments of India’s culturally diverse society, and to transform it into a country of technologically enabled people. |
