Hindi
Ketan Mehta floats film distribution firm
MUMBAI: Filmmaker Ketan Mehta, singer Anup Jalota, actor–director Deepa Sahi and media entrepreneur Subur Khan have floated a film distribution company.
Open Door Films Limited will be a wholly integrated distribution platform for independent controlled budget films Its main objective will be to provide a viable, transparent, alternative, global marketing and distribution platform for high quality Indian independent films.
Said Mehta, “Good content deserves good distribution. We keep saying that content is king, but honestly, when we get good content we don‘t respect it. It isn‘t given the kind of promotional push that it deserves to make it viable at the box office. Bad distribution kills the film, before it can even try and reach its core target audience. Recently, many concept-driven, budget-controlled films have been much appreciated by the audiences. With Open Door Films Limited, this is precisely what we seek to achieve, to turn this trend into a tide.”
In the changed contemporary film scenario in India, over 100 independent films every year fail to get proper distribution. These films, made with a lot of passion and commitment, fail to reach their target audience due to the absence of a distribution platform designed for and dedicated to such films.
With all big film and media corporations vying for big budget, big star cast films, small budget independent films find it extremely difficult to see the light of the day. Open Door Films aims to change all that.
Open Door Films will provide end-to-end marketing and distribution solutions for Indian independent filmmakers, thereby opening up immense possibilities for the future of Indian Cinema. The company, with strategic investment from Maya Digital Media, Anup Jalota and Subur Khan, will bridge the gap between makers of concept-driven films and the film distribution network.
The first film distributed by the company will be Sahi‘s Tere Mere Phere. The film takes a comic look at the man-woman relationship through the point of view of the four principal characters of the film.
The company plans to distribute between 25 and 30 films over the next three years.
Hindi
India’s telecom subscribers cross 1.32 billion in February 2026
Broadband base swells past 1.06 billion as Jio and Airtel tighten grip on the market.
MUMBAI: India’s telecom sector is ringing in steady growth once again adding millions of new connections every month while the race for broadband supremacy continues to heat up like a fiercely contested cricket match. According to the latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on 1 April 2026, the total telephone subscriber base in the country reached 1,321.31 million at the end of February 2026. This marked a net addition of 7.31 million subscribers during the month, translating into a monthly growth rate of 0.56 per cent.
Wireless subscribers (including mobile and Fixed Wireless Access) stood at 1,273.31 million, registering a net addition of 6.97 million and a growth rate of 0.55 per cent. Within this, urban wireless connections grew to 730.75 million (growth 0.70 per cent), while rural wireless subscribers reached 542.56 million (growth 0.35 per cent).
Wireline subscribers, though much smaller in scale, showed slightly faster growth. The total wireline base increased to 47.99 million, with a net addition of 0.34 million and a monthly growth rate of 0.70 per cent. Urban areas continued to dominate wireline connections with a share of 89.41 per cent.
Overall tele-density in India improved to 92.66 per cent. Urban tele-density stood at 150.68 per cent, while rural tele-density edged up to 60.02 per cent.
The broadband subscriber base crossed a significant milestone, reaching 1,059.05 million at the end of February 2026. This reflected a healthy net addition of 6.33 million subscribers and a monthly growth rate of 0.60 per cent from January’s figure of 1,052.72 million.
Segment-wise, mobile wireless access continued to drive the majority of growth with 996.52 million subscribers. Fixed Wireless Access (including 5G FWA) added 16.51 million, while wired broadband stood at 46.02 million.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. maintained its commanding lead with 519.64 million broadband subscribers. Bharti Airtel Ltd. followed with 364.14 million, Vodafone Idea Ltd. with 129.36 million, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. with 28.70 million, and Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd. with 2.38 million.
Together, these top five players command a massive 98.60 per cent share of the total broadband market.
In the wireless (mobile) segment, private operators continued to dominate with 92.59 per cent market share, leaving public sector undertakings (BSNL and MTNL) with just 7.41 per cent.
Out of the total 1,257.29 million wireless (mobile) subscribers, 1,177.60 million were active on the peak Visitor Location Register (VLR) date, representing an impressive 93.66 per cent activity rate. Bharti Airtel led in this metric with 99.42 per cent of its subscribers active.
Meanwhile, 14.47 million subscribers submitted requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in February, indicating healthy competition and customer churn across zones.
While urban areas still lead in absolute numbers, rural connectivity is slowly catching up. Rural wireless tele-density stood at 59.46 per cent, compared with the much higher urban figure of 142.32 per cent.
Fixed Wireless Access using 5G technology also showed promising traction, growing to 11.93 million subscribers. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are the primary players driving this segment.
The data paints a picture of a maturing yet still rapidly expanding telecom ecosystem. With total telephone subscribers now well past the 1.32 billion mark and broadband users comfortably above 1.06 billion, India continues to solidify its position as one of the world’s largest and most dynamic digital markets.
From bustling city streets to remote villages, more Indians are staying connected than ever before proving that when it comes to telecom, the country’s appetite for growth shows no signs of hanging up anytime soon.
