Over 100 Million Rural Mobile Subscribers In India – Opportunity For MVAS
Mobiles in recent days are not just a symbol of urbanization. Its also a necessity today in rural India. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), there has been a rise of 18% in use of the mobiles by rural subscribers. Rising from 93.2 million users at the end of last year, India today has a total of a massive 109.7 million rural mobile subscribers. The urban users on the other hand are 282 million in total.
The numbers may seem a little too big but this day was ought to come. Last month as well, World Bank released a report saying Mobile Phones and Internet Services are key aspects to the economic growth of a country and with India developing as a strong economical power in the World, the numbers aren’t astonishing. Again, in order to deliver services in remote and rural areas, mobile phones are the most efficient medium.
With the rural market being identified so well by the Indian Mobile Services as well as the handset vendors, they do not miss a single chance to get themselves on the forefront. With rural mobile market increasing, there is a huge market for Mobile VAS. The growth in mobile VAS is mainly attributed to the rural market. A few of the service providers have already taken the initiative for rural VAS.
Thomson Reuters has been updating over one lakh farmers in the country with the latest market trends, weather forecast, and crop information via its SMS-based service
Tata indicom, for example, just 4 days ago, inaugurated a project in a district in Gujarat that allows farmers to operate their irrigation pumps from remote locations without the having to travel to the farm.
Nokia on the other hand, launched their Life Tools Services, last June by means of which they offer agricultural information, educational information and more to people in both rural and urban areas.
But how much can they profit from it?
Agreed that the numbers are increasing in the rural areas day by day and with the advent of 3G services in India, its going to get higher and higher , but then, the competetion between the service providers as well as the handset vendors would also rise. Again with tariff cuts, the average revenue per user will only decrease. The profit margin though is decreasing for the services provider.
But then the number rise in the rural areas clearly indicates the reach of technology even in the remote areas and how rural people are accepting a new technology.
Now talking about Internet and Broadband uSage in rural india, initially there were small entrepreneurs coming in the forefront to provide online services in rural India. Comat is one example that was covered by WATBlog earlier. Well, now the government has also taken steps to provide rural India with braodband connectivity so that governance in rural areas is improved. The government has decided to extend broadband connectivity in all villages in India by 2012. Though this is a nice step but the question is whether Rural India will accept this technology.
Using Internet is far more difficult than using a mobile phone. Increasing number of mobile subscribers does not necessarily imply acceptance to use the Internet. Many in India still view the mobile as a “phone which is mobile”. Even in Urban zones, moible internet is not as popular as in the West. Providing Internet to the rural India would also come as a huge responsibility for the government and provide them with trainers for some time to get acquainted to its different uses.
With rural market being identified so well by the Indian Mobile Services as well as the handset vendors, they do not miss a single chance to get themselves on the forefront.This is when the Mobile VAS industry comes into the picture.
Future of VAS in Rural India
May be the low awareness of value added services (VAS) restricted the growth of value added services in rural India. So far the usage of VAS in rural areas was just 1% despite the huge network roll-out in rural areas and the intense low tariff war amongst the operators. A report by LIRNEasia states that users use their mobiles for missed calls, while some use it for messaging and checking balances. LIRNEasia is a regional information and communication technology (ICT) policy and regulation capacity-building organisation active across the Asia Pacific region. http://lirneasia.net/. Significant growth in the number of users in a rural market could facilitate players to plan services which can help them both. Rural Indian users could enjoy the benefits offered, while the cellular companies could make more money. A win-win situation, isn’t it? Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone and Idea Cellular plans to increase their average revenue per user. This shouldn’t be surprising at all from what we’ve seen so far. Who would want to waste their time on the internet when you have VAS on your mobile? Well, that could be the sales gimmick very soon.
(with inputs by Abhishek Kapoor)
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India can skip the Internet on a computer and use the internet on a mobile. With 415 mobile users and less than 40 million Internet users and only 6.2 million broadband connections that looks like a logical thing to do.
3G & WiMax will help the cause. But going on a pure wireless play without the backbone of broadband would not work. Sure, in the context of Rural VAS – wireless works.
As more and more people use Internet the need for different content including video increases. This puts a pressure directly on the bandwidth of which there is only so much on wireless.
That’s the reason why one should not neglect the broadband and invest heavily in fiber optics and next generation networks.
Read more : http://trak.in/tags/business/2009/07/15/india-can-have-500-million-internet-users-by-2012-is-that-a-pipe-dream/