The Year of the Big W

Across the $40 bn ICT industry in India, the
big story in this still-new century has been mobility. And Wireless.

The telecom and voice world had begun to swing over to the ‘big W’ in the past three years, but 2004 was decisive. Voice&Data magazine announced the Crossover: wireless had overtaken landline connections in India in the third week of October. Indians across the board, from drivers to plumbers to fishermen to schoolkids, now own or aspire to own mobile phones.

But 2004 was really the foundation year for wireless data and for mobility in India.

For the first time, cellular operators really began to sell data services, despite the GSM world having had ‘data support’ for years. This was really led by the CDMA folks, and especially Reliance. We saw executives all over using CDMA phones with USB cables, for Internet access. Reliance rolled out wireless data applications, from credit-card PoS and lottery terminals to ATMs, and it began to sell India’s first CDMA wireless data card for laptop users. The old guard of GSM operators scrambled to follow, offering GPRS packages and mobility tools like the BlackBerry handheld and service from Airtel, even as they tried desperately to push up a declining ARPU (average revenue per user) through innovations such as ‘push to talk’ on the voice side.

And India’s tiny laptop population really began to expand in 2004. For one thing, branded laptops dropped below the 50k pricepoint, and came into the consideration space for PC purchases by small businesses, homes, and mid-level and even junior executives spending their own money. Notebooks started shipping with integrated wireless, giving a reason for corporates, small businesses and even homes to consider a cheap wireless setup.

And Wi-Fi began to happen. The year was rounded off with one more step toward the unshackling and decontrol of wireless data. The 2.4 GHz spectrum became free from license and controls for indoor use. Within a campus, you can use any equipment in that band, whether 802.11g or 802.11b or Bluetooth or a cordless phone, without requiring a license. The first real ‘hotspots’ outside five-star hotels began to pop up at airports (priced at Re 1 a minute, with a Rs 30 prepaid card), even as hotels continued with incredibly stupid and short-sighted pricing (such as Taj hotels’ Rs 3,000 charge per person, even for a few minutes of Wi-Fi use, to ‘non guests’).

So amidst all the growth landmarks—the BPO’s rising, the domestic industry’s resurgence, a recovery in defence spending-–some solid foundations for wireless were quietly laid in India in 2004. And that spells some real excitement in the year ahead, for users, and the industry.

Prasanto K Roy