It reminded me of a few other cases I had looked into, of telecom
deregulation. In fact, New Zealand is going through it right now,
having begun the process in earnest about 10 yrs ago. Australia was
also in a similar boat. The choices they had to make, and still
making, is similar to what we are going through today.

It’s hard, to let go and privatise such a seemingly integral part of
the govt. apparatus, but the truth is in this age of mobile
technology, the BTCL is pretty much stillborn unless it innovates, and
does so fast. But privatization is not going to work if its old wine
in a new bottle. Honestly, most govts learn it the hard way, but the
only role they can play, and should play, is that of a regulator. It’s
probably fair to say that getting users to make 10x more calls, or
getting 10x more users is just not going to happen. BTCL will have to
learn to operate within those constraints, and do so sustainably.