Mobiles: Hot in Winter

An audit of the telephony services for the month of December 2003 has
revealed spectacular growth of basic and mobile penetration in the country. For
instance, India added almost close to two million new telephone lines comprising
GSM and CDMA. According to industry sources, the private players in the CDMA
mobile and fixed line grew by 7% with 549,984 new lines added in the month of
December 2003 alone and taking the total customer base to 8.11 million in this
segment. Meanwhile, during the same period GSM service providers roped in 1.27
million new lines taking their total subscriber base to 21.99 million. The
year-end spurt in CDMA and GSM adoption takes the overall size of the wireless
telephony market closer to 30 million.

The steady incline in mobile penetration in the country has all the trappings
of a trend in the making. For instance, less than three out of 100 Indians have
a mobile phone as compared to 19 in China and 60 in Europe. However, with both
GSM and CDMA providers announcing price cuts and value adds by the day, industry
analysts peg a figure of 100 million mobile phone connections by 2005.

Comparisons and growth apart, the key aspect one has to factor at this point
in time is the impact of mobile phones on the wireless communications. India has
just started adopting WiFI, and one is seeing the emergence of hotspots across
the country. The adoption of WiFi by hotels and airports creates a shared public
infrastructure. But with the emergence of convergence, mobile phones apart from
being a basic voice communication device, does a whole lot of intelligent
applications like - access to Internet, email and mobile banking among others.
Also, today the mobile phones seamlessly integrate with laptops’ and make an
individual to communicate on the go. It becomes evident that in time, mobile
phones will become more intelligent and will become a pervasive wireless
technology for the masses.

Shrikanth G in Chennai