There is a telecom revolution sweeping India, and unlike many countries it is through the “Unwired” or “Wireless” route. The penetration of telephone when we just had landline phones (wired) in our country was lower than 2%. Having a phone was considered a privilege of sorts. While today triggered by the viral growth of mobile telephony, the telephone penetration (teledensity) has crossed the 13% mark. It is expected that by 2010 India will have a teledensity of 35% or more. It’s hard to believe we could do so much in such a short time, but if we had followed the path that developed countries followed (traditional landline networks) we would have taken 10-15 additional years to achieve the kind of penetration we have today. And this will be more and more evident when we re-look at the numbers 7-8 years down the line.
These hard-to-believe numbers are corroborated by equally enticing anecdotes. I was traveling in a train from Bangalore to the northern part of India. During most of the journey I could easily receive and make phone calls. Also, noteworthy is that not only the voice but the data connectivity has also taken great strides in India. While the train was cruising through the uninhabited terrains (mountains, forests, barren lands and others) I could still surf the Internet through my Reliance Data card cum telephone connection. Three years back when I had made a similar journey, these things were not at all possible. No wonder India witnessed the world’s highest number of new mobile subscriber additions in the month of August 2006 (5.9 million new mobile users) leaving China (5.19 million) behind.
Zinnov expects that India will cross the 200 million mobile subscribers mark at the latest by the end of December 2007. On the data front Zinnov expects that the first 3G launch will happen between November 2007 and February 2008 in India. Zinnov also expects that India will sustain the growth it is witnessing now for the next 4-5 years mainly driven by:
- Falling tariffs & affordability
- Infrastructure sharing by the service providers
- Increased penetration in small towns, villages
- Urban penetration, which is expected to grow even further
In a country of more than a billion, if everybody gets connected and is linked to the country’s economic, social and business system, it would not result in anything less than fast growth. “Hail” mobile telephony.
