Indian telcos target rural community are adapting wireless networks for unique uses.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of India’s second-biggest mobile-phone network, says fishermen on the nation’s southern coast are using their cell phones while at sea to call traders and find out who’s paying the most for lobsters. He’s planning to stop that. Instead, Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd will offer the fishermen a wireless Internet service that would provide up-to-date prices for their catch and even allow them to book orders from their boats. Doing that, the fishermen ‘will significantly increase their earnings’, he says. Fishermen aren’t the only ones on Mr Mittal’s radar screen. In the next 12 to 24 months, he plans to introduce technology that will enable farmers to monitor weather conditions in real time on their mobile phones.
via The Desi Flavor
As the revenues dry up in the metros for the biggies,they have no other option except to branch out to those who have been left out of “development”.It is happening finally and good enough. Expect more people, those who had fallen out of the loop, as to say, to be signed up for the services in the future. It is then that the Indian Telecom Revolution would have come of age.
China has become THE hot market because it has been able to turn its huge population into a huge potential consumer-base. When India does the same thing, and on a more market-based economy… look out.