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: About 8-9 years back, voice penetration levels in India were of the order of 2-3 % and people had to wait for a long time to get connected. The telecom revolution which we see today was kick started with the advent of wireless technology which resulted in, India being the fastest growth market for wireless voice. The story is not going to be any different in case of broadband penetration. Once again, we are sitting at levels of 2-3 % of broadband penetration today. With the advent of 3G it is expected to bring in similar revolution in the wireless broadband access space in the country.
Critics may say that 3G is happening in India a trifle late. I think 3G is very well timed for us, as we are now getting close to peaking in terms of the new customer additions in the metros. There has to be something new and exciting to keep the numbers and ARPU’s flowing from these areas as well, and what better proposition than 3G. It brings in another dimension to the mobile market which till now was the fixed line (copper) domain. Apart from this we can take advantage of the fact that operators have gone through the learning curve and maturing of the technology phase and we are there at the right time to reap in benefits of a fairly matured and well developed technology. In fact most of the 3G markets across all developing nations picked up only after HSPA came up as the evolved 3G, however we shall be in a position to straight away launch with HSPA. With the kind of volumes that India offers I do not see any reason why we would not be able to catch up with the other parts of the world in terms of 3G customer numbers within the time frame of next 2 to 3 years.
Another boost that 3G is likely to bring is in terms of off-loading a part of the 2.5 G spectrum especially in spectrum starved areas. We can now have some of the heavy users take on the 3G spectrum, providing us the opportunity to use the space so created in the 2.5G spectrum to add a few more customers as well as improve the service experience.
From a customer standpoint, though customers in India are price sensitive, they are on an overdrive and always demanding for more services. The Indian urban market is as demanding as any other developed nation, which has been proved by the success of some of the applications like CRBT and music downloads. 3G brings in a broadband pipe to the wireless device, thereby enabling launch of bandwidth intensive services such as video streaming and mobile TV. Value-added services such as video on demand would be on segmented customers’ most favoured list when India embraces 3G.
With the government focus on driving broadband penetration and initiatives like e-governance and m-commerce, 3G shall help customers to take advantages of such initiatives. In fact, 3G would further enable the government to achieve the target of 20 million by 2010. As has been proved in the rest of the world, voice and data cards (internet access) are the most sticky mass market 3G applications. There are also a host of other niche applications which have helped 3G. There is enough bandwidth available for multitude of applications to run at 3G gives us the liberty to launch specifically targeted applications and not worry about the mass adaptation of the application. With entertainment being big business in India, 3G with its multimedia applications capabilities does offer a huge potential opportunity. We shall have to see how things evolve in this space.
However, the journey ahead will not be bereft of some challenges. One of the impediments on the technological front is around affordability and availability of terminals, that is, handsets/data cards etc. Generally the terminal technology has followed the infrastructural technology.
Today, you get handsets for less than $20 in India, which is the lowest across the world. A small percentage of handsets in India are 3G compatible. However, 3G will set similar price point thresholds for itself. As per my understanding, a sub-$50 3G compatible handset should work well with the consumers. Handset manufacturers have supported the market by their unique price offerings for India. I expect them to extend the same support for 3G as well.
Another challenge is of educating the consumer about the various applications on offer. India is country of multiple languages and one has to make sure to communicate services in the different languages. In fact, it will be customer experience that will determine the stickiness of content and applications for 3G.
I do believe that 3G has the potential of driving ‘Share of Telecom’ for the mobile operators to ‘Share of Wallet’. It is also the opportunity to bridge the digital divide between urban and rural India.
—The writer is president, mobility, Bharti Airtel
(As told to Surabhi Agarwal)
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