Affordability is the caller tune for 3G

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: If the charges are high, users may not opt for video services and full potential of the market cannot be utilised. 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 and 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, matrimonials, 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, mirocredit, e-coupons, game score updates and news. 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.