Affordability is the caller tune for 3G

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: If the first half of this decade has seen the internet become a necessity, the next five 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 a 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, socialising, you 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. Every telecom company will 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 five times the population of Singapore as a potential 3G market.

Japan and Korea are the top two markets that have embraced 3G emphatically. The same cannot be said of other 3G mature markets like the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Singapore and Australia. 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.