After the Left has left the government (a big thank you!) a lot of ‘right’ things seem to be happening! India moves forward on the N-deal and finally, government announces the much awaited 3G policy. Few highlights,
Getting a bit technical (end user doesn’t care about the following figures!),
Experts are not sure how fast/soon Indian mobile users will patronize 3G as it took 8-10 years for customers in Europe to take 3G seriously. Europe has been always ahead in adopting advanced technology when compared to the US.
How does 3G effect end users?
Users need to pay an extra fee to use the 3G services if the pricing is correct (and the economy is hot) I believe 3G will be a huge success in India in a shorter span of time than what people would expect. Users need to buy 3G enabled phones to use 3G, the price of such phones could be as high as Rs 6,500 ($160) as compared to the current entry-level phone of Rs 800 ($20). But then once India shows huge volumes in the consumption of 3G handsets the price will surely reduce drastically. Mobile handset vendors must be drooling by now looking at the 3G market size in India.
What would this mean to publishers in India?
Personally, to begin with, I just want the mobile-surfing to improve drastically in India. Even with the current speeds, I have seen decent growth for our mobile portal, oneindia.mobi. With higher speeds, I am sure we will see excellent growth in our traffic. I don’t think I can watch a movie on my handset (and I don’t think it is advisable!).
Monetisation for Publishers
According to AdMob, they serve over 300 million ads per month on Indian mobi portals alone (second only to the US!!!). This is a very encouraging number and with 3G I believe a lot more pages will be surfed on mobile handsets which should translate to more monies to mobi portals such as oneindia.mobi
WiMAX
While everyone is talking about 3G I think WiMAX has been somewhat overshadowed by 3G in the media. WiMAX is considered to be 10-30 times faster than 3G but do these two services actually compete with each other?
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The rates have been revised by the govt. See http://www.medianama.com/2008/09/223-indian-govt-modifies-auction-guideliness-3g-cdma-auction-wimax-reserve-price-increased/