Telecom sector will drive up the rate of growth of Indian GDP in the coming years.The growth rate of mobile subscribers in India is currently an amazing 82.2%.

According to Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Dayanidhi Maran, by the end of the year 2007 India will have 250 million mobiles subscribers (a teledensity of 22 %) of whom 50 million will be rural connection. The 2007 geographical coverage by mobile connectivity is targeted at 85% of the country.

By end of Nov ’06 India had 100 million GSM subscribers and 36 million CDMA subscribers taking the tally to 136 million. Of the total GSM subscriber base of 100,786,048 , Metro contributed 19,471,600, A Circle cities -36,058,626, B Circle – 35,096,746 and C Circle – 10,159,076.

Drivers for increasing mobile coverage are

1. Infrastructure sharing – The government’s decision of providing support from USO Fund will open up the vast untapped market in rural areas. By 2007 rural areas will see sharing of 8000 towers for mobile telephony as well as broadband coverage and an increase in urban area from current 25% to 40%.
2. Research and Development – India will play a pre-eminent role as a technology solution provider. Affordable technology for masses and a comprehensive security infrastructure for telecom network will be major focus areas in 2007.
3. Government Policies - Facilitating the availability of adequate bandwidth at competitive prices to roll out advanced technologies like 3G and Wimax.

The telecom equipment sector is expected to hit the $100 billion mark within next three years according to according to P S Ramesh, president, Telecom Equipment Manufacturers’ Association of India (TEMA). The current size of the sector is $26 billion.
 
Major drivers would be

1. High rate of investment – Already $1.5 billion has been committed and the next year is likely to see another $2 billion of investment.
2. Government initiatives like 100% FDI in telecom equipment manufacturing sector, proposed setting up of Telecom Equipment and Services Export Promotion Council and Telecom Testing and Security Certification Centre (TETC) makes the sector very attractive for the investors.
3. India as centre seat – Companies like Cisco are making India their global center while Indian concerns are very upbeat the sector’s growth.
4. Exports will form a sizeable component of the domestically manufactured equipment.
5. High-end Technology – 3G mobile services, expected to roll out in 2007, will see $6 billion investment in the infrastructure. Domestic manufacturing centres will be major source of the 3G network equipment. WiMax services will require WiMAX compatible high-end technology equipment for its networks. This will lead to increasing domestic production to reduce costs.
6. India as a manufacturing base – Major telecom companies like Nokia, Motorola and LG have already set up their manufacturing facilities in the country to cater to the massive domestic demand. Decreased cost of production, high volume of sales and increasing research to produce equipment to suit the Indian reality has led to drop in the cost of entry level mobile handsets which fuels greater demand for it.(Source)

Average revenue per user stands at under $8 per month in 2006. Value Added Services will boost the falling ARPU in the mobile sector. Messaging revenues will pass 1$bn annually in 2007. (Stats from Wireless World Forum). The major drivers of VAS are :

1. Local content development - Increasing focus on localisation and development of local content will make the VAS services more attractive. Decreasing revenue from voice services will be padded by revenue from availability of local content especially the local language songs as ring tones/hello tunes, localized wallpapers, screensavers, contests.
2. Development of local language compatibility - Development of tools and fonts in all major Indian languages by 2007.
3. M–commerce – Increasing development of applications like M-Ticketing for movies, Air Travel, Electricity bill payment.
4. Mobile TV - Telecom ministry’s target of making Mobile TV available in top 20 cities/towns in 2007
5. Entertainment – Release of the first bollywood film for mobile and expected flow of more such films, mobile episodes of TV soaps, conversion of popular content like Mahabharat, Malgudi days for mobiles.
6. M-education – Projects like LILA ‘Learn Indian Language through Artificial Intelligence’ are the precursors of the development and usage of the medium in an economy like India.
7. Advertising – The availability of complete profile data of subscribers along with tracking via GPRS makes it possible to deliver message to the niche audience. This unique feature in combination with the untapped potential of the will see increasing focus of advertisers and a growth in revenue from advertising.
8. Video based applications – With 2.5G networks and expected roll out of 3G in 2007, video based applications like video SMS, accessing and sharing of video clips, podcasts and others.

So what are the developments in the mobile sector that you would like to see in 2007? Perhaps purchase of condoms via mobile? Or maybe the going through school interview for admission of your child in the comfort and safety of your home? And why not video-blessing couples getting married in some corner of the country?
 

First was the King and his clergy; Second, the royalty; Third, the people; Fourth became the media; Fifth happened when Internet came in quietly and began reigning our everyday life; The Sixth Estate might as well be the little screen that we wake up to the sound of, sleep next to, and do many things with, in between!

None of the first five estates have escaped from the sight of the Advertising industry so far. So how come the sixth remains? Or does it?

The glitzy world of Advertising in India is slowly waking up to the potential of VAS on mobile as the powerful new medium. While the advertising industry in the west has been fast to harness the little mobile by pumping funds into the medium, one is yet to find a well-defined ad-spend in the Indian scenario.

According to an overseas mobile based ad-spend predictions report :

“Advertisers will spend some $11.35 billion worldwide on mobile advertising in 2011, according to a new Informa Telecoms & Media (a UK based research firm) study titled “Mobile Advertising Services: generating revenue through subsidized content,” reports Red Herring. Informa forecasts 2.1 billion mobile subscribers worldwide by the end of 2006, and nearly 4 billion by 2011. As mobile operators introduce less-expensive phones, faster networks, and cheaper service, they will need to increase the bottom line somehow – and that will be via ad-subsidized content, according to the study.”

Similar search to probe the Indian Advertising industry’s figures for mobile based VAS services as a medium did not fetch any worthwhile results. Even if there is some report that might have been missed, the “on-field” experience does prove the point.

Most enterprises resist using the medium of mobile VAS. At best, they treat an sms or voice messaging as a poor little communication tool, way below the all powerful mass media of radio, television and grudgingly, perhaps, the Internet. Only a few enterprises have shown foresight in discovering the two-way communication potential of this medium. Advertising agencies, though quite aware of what’s happening, seem to still treat this medium as a poor cousin to others.

Future students of mass media are likely to study the fascinating medium and analyzing why it did not catch on fast enough in India. They would see how:

• It is a mobile – ATM Any Time Medium with numbers growing by the hour.
• Customized to peoples’ needs and timings.
• Once the infrastructure is in place, does not need too much production cost.
• Non intrusive medium (SMS)
• And saving the best for the last, the arsenal this medium derives power from… (just let this seep into the collective advertising conscious)… Well, we are talking about the all powerful feedback, the MIS, the incredibly transparent logs generated… who picked up the call, for how many seconds, how many times did a user play, what was his age, what brand does he prefer… as many W’s and H’s as you please!

This is what a mobile VAS application and content developer has on offer – a potent publicity medium and a post-activity survey (that comes back to you instantly, tells you the real story without any fudging…) all rolled into one, at lesser costs!! Too good to be true, eh?

Taking the case of a popular brand of cigarettes:-

Their need: surrogate advertising, sustaining user interest, innovation, brand building.   The response: SMS based application made operational quickly within a matter of days. The Result: An overwhelming public response from just 6 Indian cities it ran in for over 15 days. With the gathering of the data generated, the Cigarette Brand found the mobile VAS advertising a novel and very precise way of analyzing just who their typical customer is, and who could be converted, while the customer awaits in anticipation for the next scheme to roll out.

Every wind of change carries its share of nay sayers. It can be said that this is too static a medium with far to less a scope for creative exploration – that there’s only very limited one can do in 160 characters or 30 seconds of voice recording, after all.

Well, the only thing one can say is: You’d be surprised!

Remember those teen years when every issue was a life and death situation? What to wear, how to start a conversation with the one you have hots for, which present to give to your love, how to deal with a snub or a break up? We all turned to friends for advise and at times, when friends couldn’t help to Agony Aunt columns in newspapers and magazine. We looked for answers and hoped to find solutions to our predicament. 

  

With increasing usage of mobiles by teenagers, how soon would it be that some smart mobile service provider will start a such a service? Already astrology is a great hit in the same sphere. An sms based, voice based or even video streaming based service is sure to find many takers. Especially if the operator can reassure the subscribers that it will be well guarded interaction and details revealed only under extreme circumstance.

We would love to know how you feel about having access to such a service i.e. if it’s ever available.

Who is that one person in whose good books you always want to be in? Think about it? Except for agnostics and perhaps communists, most would opt for lord all mighty!

So whom do you revere? Siddhi Vinayak? Tirupati Balaji? Mata Sheravali? Shrinathji? Don’t you wish you could be blessed without taking those precious days off from your work and undertaking a journey to temples? If only you could offer prayers from comfort of your residence? How wonderful it would be to have the facility of puja being conducted by priests of the temple by paying for it by just sending a sms. Religion based ringtones have already captured the imagination and a sizeable chunk of the ringtone market. In a country where religion is such an integral part of life, perhaps this m-commerce application will break the mental barrier against mobile based purchasing.

And then we can look forward to a bouquet of services – special ringtones, video streaming of the puja offering, blessed sms messages that can be forwarded to friends and relatives. It would also offer great advertising opportunity to manufacturers of puja products, hotels near temples, special religion based travel schemes, courier service (after all some courier company will bring prasad for you).

Search function is increasingly becoming available to mobile subscribers especially with the spread of technologies like GPRS, WCDMA, HSDPA. The knowledge of geaographical location of the mobile handset adds an important dimension to search on mobile (LBS application). Subcriber’s query about specifics like ATMs, restaurants, hospitals, hotels in his area of usage will be instantly answered.The success of search depends on content aggregation and backend support. In this scenario a surge in demand and supply content aggregators can be expected. This will provide a fillip to mobile advertising. Not too far in future, mobile advertising will give a run for money to currently more prevalent form of advertising like TV and print media.

Its time to sharpen those pencils – expect a surge in demand for content writers!!

Have you noticed how NDTV anchors say SMS 6388 or NDTV on your cell phone?

It works when you have a normal cell phone with 1-9 keypad. But what if you have a PDA with a qwerty keyboard? So, depending on the location of numbers on your keypad, you get some really weird acronyms – for instance on the Ipaq 6388 would be LOMM :)

And CNBC (normally 2622) translates to ILII :) (ILLI – isn’t that rat in Kannada?)

By the way 3030 is O.O.