Indian Telecom industry recently crossed the 600 million mark thanks to wireless subscribers who comprise the most with 563.73 million subs. Also the overall Tele density in India has reached 51.05% and wireless Tele-density to 47.91%.
Really a remarkable achievement isn’t it!, if only and only “Figures” are concerned.BUT behind the curtains story seems to be bit different and one can see 17 operators toiling hard to maintain their ride.
New operators in line for launch in different circles, Falling ARPU, per second billing, Operators searching new ways for increasing revenue, cost cuttings, People working in telecom sector under strain for performances,3G & MNP still in process, Pressure on Telecom / VAS vendor companies, another war between the VAS-vendors with the Telecom Content Providers and many more such aspects… forces one to think that is Indian Telecom Industry really going in right direction?
What I see from here is the major buyouts; one operator to overtake another and a set of few who will rule the Indian Telecom afterwards Let’s wait and watch!!!
But one thing to be noted aren’t the factors stated above semi- implicitly forced the telecom operators to get attention by any means even they have no concern with it, this can be very well seen in the Aircel’s campaign for saving the Tigers or Idea’s idea to save the paper no doubt the causes are really appreciable and we value both the operators that they came out of the way to support such noble causes but what if – if you view these events from a lay-man’s angle or from a realist view?? anyway still they supported the noble cause.
Also we seen the Operator which alone reigned at Top from last Half-an- year Tata Teleservices Ltd. was overruled by Vodafone last month in the highest count of new subs addin. But still the rise of TTSL didn’t came via ease they were the first in India to bring up the two extremities in the billing tariff and which were PER SECOND BILLING & PER CALL BILLING everyone else had to follow them i still remember few months back as and when Docomo was launching in circles the other operators of that region were shifting to per second plans, So here’s a lesson for all the operators “if u want to be ahead of herd than you got to start with something new and let the others follow you”
3G auction is in phase and having international bidders including NTT DoCoMo, Emirates Telecommunications, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom in addition to Indian operators like, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices and Vodafone Essar, a gamut of brand names everyone will surely be eager to hear what the outcome is “if things happened as planned”
Recently Apple inc launched i-phone 3GS in India almost after an year of its international launch I guess apple guy’s might be thinking what will the people of India do with it without 3G network okay jokes apart one thing to my surprise any operator in India haven’t officially declared any sort of price cut on old i-phone 3G rather if we look at US market the day 3GS was introduced iphone 3G was lowered by half the price i.e. from $199 to $99 but here we are still getting it on the same rate, one of the reason for it might be the less popularity. of iphone here if compared to rest of the world but who to blame?
The pricing of iphone in India in not so attractive, For e.g. if like US here we can get an i-phone 3GS @Rs 10000 almost equal to $199 and flexibity of paying rest of the amount in lockin period as it’s trend abroad than we could have seen iphone’s in many Indian pockets but we are getting an iphone after spending around Rs 30K in one go and that too operator dependent. Change the strategy apple guy’s and see the rise in sales!!! Another thing that bugs Indian customers about iphone is its dependency with the apple softwares.
Also the news coming that Google’s nexus one is coming to India and to shred its price they are cutting down some of its features keeping in mind Indian users are less tech-savy now this is a sluggish excuse Google, what about the creative techy minds of India and the gadget freaks who are waiting phone with full functionality, all these so called Smartphone companies don’t give interesting offers to the Indian users as they provide to rest of the world and then blame that average Indian is using Low cost handsets not the smart phones what to say???
But what you say readers we are eager to hear all are welcome to post their comments/views below – THANKS!!!
