Two of them (BSNL, MTNL) are government-based telecom operators, and they’re both in dire conditions, to the point that they won’t survive even after merging, during the 5G telecom upgrade.

Vodafone-Idea also has very low percentage of users. Bharti-Airtel and Reliance-Jio has almost 40% of the user. That’s a duopoly.

And if you’ve been following /c/india@lemmy.ml, you might also know how Bharti-Airtel and Reliance-Jio were both involved in the electoral bond scam. It is the biggest scam after the 2G, CWG, IPL and Coalgate scam in India.

Bharti-Airtel were transparent about it, but Reliance-Jio has probably used lots of shell companies - there’s dozens of articles out there pointing the relationship between random, unknown electoral bond, which turned out to be Reliance-Jio’s executive level directors and managers.