The most innovative companies don't do different things, they just do things differently. And that seems to make all the difference.

By turning its weaknesses into virtues, Bharti changed the telecom industry paradigm. Result: In a booming industry, it’s still ahead of the pack.

The Department of Telecom has cleared TRAI’s proposals to allow active infrastructure sharing between telecom service providers

Exports growth may not be severely hit, after all. Worried Commerce Ministry officials had lowered export projections for 2007-08 from $160 billion (Rs 6,40,000 crore) to $140 billion (Rs 5,60,000 crore) a few months ago on the back of an appreciating rupee.

Having hit $1 billion in revenues, Cisco’s plan now is to create a market rather than wait for it to happen.

Nearly two years after it acquired Aircel from C. Sivasankaran, Malaysia’s Maxis Group wants to become a pan-India player, with $4 billion in investment over the next two years.

The Indian Telecom Industry is one of the fastest-growing Telecom markets in the world, with a huge potential to expand in the wireless segment. Teledensity is up from 18 per cent to 24 per cent over the last year.

Telecom Minister A. Raja wants to bring down average call rates to around 25 paise a minute, but telecom operators are not waiting for a diktat from the ministry to offer discounts, though rates and schemes vary from circle to circle.

The Department of Telecom is busy sortingoutthe spectrummuddle. To begin with, it has rejected the claim by CDMA operators that GSM players were hoarding spectrum.

The big boys of Indian telecom just can’t have enough of a booming market for wireless services. That’s why they plan to pump billions in putting up more infrastructure and expanding into new areas in the fiscal year ahead. Meantime, a clutch of pretenders has ambitions of gate-crashing the Great Telecom Party.

Unitech and Videocon are among them, but what about spectrum?

Martin Julius Esslin must be chortling from beyond the grave. The famous author and literary critic coined the term, “The Theatre of the Absurd”, to describe works by several famous authors from the 1920s to the 1960s.

TRAI and the Telecom Ministry are now trying to ring in number portability at the earliest. This will allow mobile users to retain their existing numbers even when they switch operators.

Ever wondered why your 256 kbps broadband connection never seemed like broadband? Well, it seems service providers have been short-changing consumers. Investigations by the telecom regulator, TRAI, have revealed that many operators had circumvented the rule by offering services with speeds “up to 256 kbps”. That is, a maximum speed of 256 kbps as against DoT’s rule of 256 kbps minimum.

There are still quite a few undervalued stocks that could see big upsides in the new year. We shortlist 10 such gems.

Amar Babu seems to relish the heat and dust of the fast-growing Indian market. Just months after moving to the US as MD, South Asia (Sales and Marketing Group), Intel, Babu finds himself back home.

Meet India's top ten richest men

Take the top three automotive companies by market cap (Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki and Bajaj Auto) and pit them against the top three real estate companies, DLF, Unitech, and Housing Development and Infrastructure.

Both companies are riding the telecom boom and growing fast, but there’s little to suggest that the #2 will overtake the leader anytime soon.

Spectrum delayed is growth denied—that may be exactly the thought running through the minds of some of the country’s biggest telecom czars, as well as the 46 promoters who have applied for new licences and spectrum.