India, April 29 -- There was a simpler time for India's telecom space. I'm old enough to remember an era when we had as many as 12 players, across GSM and CDMA technologies. Pricing wars were an obvious result when market contours are like this. Times have changed. The select telcos that remain now focus on increasing average revenue per user. Your postpaid bills and prepaid recharge costs are rising. There are many ways to go about this, and a sophisticated illustration of the last twelve months makes it clear, that telcos are trying it all. Bundling subscriptions, a pitch of value added services and network level features they hope will stem user churn (portability means there is little consumer loyalty, and in a way, rightly so).

I'll...