A joke doing the rounds among telecom analysts is in India, long-term evolution (LTE), or 4G services, isn’t likely to cause a short-term revolution. For telecom companies, that could be cruel joke as the adoption of the next-generation mobile broadband service (4G) is happening at a pace that is much slower than expected.

Sample this: a year after the largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel, launched LTE services across 350 cities and towns, the country’s 4G subscriber base stands at just 6.5 million. Of this, over five million are clients of Bharti alone. Even as India is ...