India has been one of the strongest prospects of mobile phone and services companies after their respective local markets. In fact, the country has been perceived as Asia’s best bet for growth and development for telecommunications business. However, with current developments involving the governments, its growing concerns on security risks and rifts with mobile carrier providers, one question surfaced: is India still a positive dwelling place to grow and invest on telecoms, specifically mobile phones and services?

One of the biggest stories that hit the prints is the rumored ban against Blackberry-maker Research in Motion (RIM) by the Indian government. The speculations sprouted India’s rule and campaign over monitoring the message exchanges via text, phone calls, videos and other multimedia channel to calculate security risks—a regulation that RIM could not fully support as they follow “global standards.”  Moreover, the BlackBerry maker says its system is designed so that the sponsoring business or organization has the solitary technical capability to grant access to encrypted enterprise email.

“RIM and the Government of India have had a variety of constructive discussions over the past several months and we are pleased with the outcomes and progress of these discussions,” RIM mentioned in an official statement.

Aside from the on-going battles against foreign telecom companies, local players has expressed doubts if they could ever thrive in an industry covered with vague rules, has stiff tariff war and revenue growth.

Others, like Telenor Asia’s head Sigve Brekke, are still very optimistic on India and firmly stated that they are not giving up despite present threats and enormous losses.  “India is the most competitive (telecom) market in Asia. Tough competition makes the price very low. In order to make a profit, we have to build up our business scale, expand our distribution channel and implement a cost-efficient business model and dynamic pricing,” Brekke noted in an interview by press in Hong Kong recently. He is still mum about the issue of regulatory uncertainties and the time frame for when they are seeing to commence profiting from their business in India.

With all these entanglements mobile phone and service providers being realized by both local and foreign telecom companies in India, will you still be convinced to shell out new investments to this side of Asia?