Mobile

3G in India: Opportunities and Challenges

Last Saturday (April 25, 2010) MobileMonday had organized an interesting panel discussion – “3G – Are we ready?”. The panelists were,

N. Chandrasekhar, GM (Sales & Marketing), BSNL Karnataka
Manjula Sridhar, Head, Market Analysis Group in Huawei Technologies
Sunil Rao, Head of Forum Nokia India
Sunil M, Mango Technologies
S.R. Raja (Moderator), GM (Strategy), Sasken

For a Saturday morning the attendance was very good. The talks were short and to the point. Some highlights,

S.R. Raja

Govt wants 3G to have an effect on Development Sector (Education, Health) & Welfare Sector
Will investment bring crowding effect?
2G started in the peaks (urban area) instead of the valleys (non-Tier-1 cities). Will 3G go the other way, i.e. start in valleys and then to peaks. Doubtful.
Govt has clearly said if there is no inclusive growth we will not see real growth (i.e. 3G must be available to everyone in India)
3G will revolutionize wireless broadband in India

Chandrasekhar

Most states have about 14 mobile operators
BSNL/MTNL 3G services already available in 666 (Omen?) cities in India, 14 cities in Karnataka
Dec 2009: 21% of rural population use mobile, ARPU & tariff coming down
On 2G the ARPU is Rs 144, it should go up with 3G
Network operators have a huge challenge. They cannot tinker with the 2G equipment to offer 3G, they have to invest on fresh capex for 3G.
In spite of tariff coming down, the average minutes of usage per customer per month is going down (currently at 411 minutes a month). Operators expected it to go up in view of reduction in tariff.
Govt expected by 2008 India would have 40 million internet users & 20 million broadband connections but even in 2009 India had 50 million internet users & a mere 8 million broadband connections. Once India has 30 million broadband connections it will create 1.89 million direct jobs & 60 million indirect jobs, add $90m to GDP.
3G stakeholders

Manjula

Every mobile handset will have its own IP address
Companies like Huawei have been technically ready with products for 3G in India. Just waiting & waiting for it to happen.

Sunil (Nokia)

3G enabled phones in use: 20% in the world, 8% in India
Only half of these have enabled 3G services
Other half haven’t enabled 3G services because of the subscription cost factor
To make 3G viable for the operator the ARPU needs to be more than $10
By 2013 India will have about 18-19 million 3G users
Monthly cost is expected to be 20-30% more than 2G
Email, chat, social networking, internet radio work fine on 2G & 2.5G. No killer ap on 3G yet, so migration of users from 2G to 3G will be slow in India.
50% of 3G apps are LBS based (location based service)

MobileMonday Bangalore has continued to hold very useful discussions, keep up the good work.

BG Mahesh

Internet application ideator and implementor. Been there and done that since early 1990s. I like to present data to the common man in the simplest manner on the internet.