3G technology will accelerate the mobile revolution in India K.Sheker

3G technology will accelerate the mobile revolution in India
K.Sheker
If the first half of this decade has seen the internet become a necessity, the next 5 years will see a boom in the Mobile Space. India is one of the few countries where mobile phone adoption has been quicker than PCs. With 3G in India on the anvil, it is going to be an exciting phase for the Indian telecom market. With Bollywood and Cricket being the engines of entertainment in India, 3G can really be defining moment for entertainment for the Indian Market. Everyone needs to gear up for a 3G life and is doing so readily and quickly- telecom operators, technology providers, VAS providers and needless to say the consumers, for whom the world seems to be on their mobiles. Retailing, banking, entertainment, information, socializing, name it and it will all happen on the mobile. India is well on its way to become one of the leading mobile players with a huge mobile subscriber base and every telecom company would target the Indian consumer making the mobile really cheap so that even the farmers can afford it, turning the mobile into an all-in- one device.
The 3G bonanza, which will offer very high-speed mobile wireless services, is all set to kick off a new ecosystem in mobile advertising, mobile TV and mobile content. It will also enable user friendly viewing experience as the bandwidth issues gets resolved in 3G. In India, there are at least 20 million 3G enabled phones which means India already has 5 times Singapore’s population as a potential 3G market. Japan and Korea are the top two markets who have embraced 3G emphatically. The same cannot be said of other 3G Mature markets like UK, Germany, France, Italy, Singapore, Australia etc. The unique aspect of 3G is that every country reacted differently to 3G services. How will India react is anybody’s guess. But what is going for India is that Mobile has become a lifestyle and has been embraced positively.
Some of the key things to consider for 3G VAS services to be successful in the Indian market is ease of use, low cost, user friendly video watching experience and above all content. Content will define the adoption of 3G services in India. 3G gives the flexibility of viewing videos in different ways. Through WAP, videos can be pushed as bandwidth is higher in 3G and so are data charges per MB of download. If the charges are high, users may not opt for video services and full potential of the market cannot be utilized. Videos can also be pushed through video calls which is a low cost version of watching a video without needing any mobile data plan. This has the capability to reach the masses in India and is as easy as making a call on your 3G phone. The number of people who opt for 3G services would be determined by the content. Unlike most other countries, we are not looking at 3G services as a premium service but as an extension of 2G. Our broadband penetration is abysmal, so there will be a great demand for broadband on the mobile. Another big opportunity is Interactive mobile video marketing/advertising, video social networking, Interactive gaming. But there needs to be critical mass for these kinds of applications.
People in India are looking forward to more information, faster data access and multimedia services through their mobile phones. 3G technology is here to turn this dream into reality. It’s a technology anxiously awaited by telecom operations and subscribers in India. Be it advertisements, TV serials, matrimonial, video greetings, video calls or job interviews most web content will move to the mobile phone, once 3G services start mid 2009.
Most importantly, rural India will need 3G more. The rapid spread of television content in rural India validates that audio visual content can be easily absorbed by rural India. The key to enabling the proliferation of 3G based services in the rural areas is to get the pricing right. 3G can play a major role in long distance education which is a vastly untapped market in India. Services for rural areas could be as wide as weather forecasts, mobile crop auctions, tele-medicine, micro credit, e-coupons, game score updates, news, etc. The shift towards 3G would depend on affordability, which would be determined by the price that operators would have to pay for radio frequencies.
While at one end there is an effort to bring down the cost of the handset so as to reach out to millions of prospective users, at the other end there is an attempt to make your phone the only device you need. With 3G networks coming into the picture this becomes a distinct reality. So you have enhanced data rates, multiple means of communication, seamless roaming and convergence. This coupled with improved user experiences like I phone type touch displays and your PC becomes obsolete. If in 2008, one can’t imagine a world without the Internet, in 2010 one can’t imagine life without your cell-phone.
The future is the mobile.