The Indian mobile industry is witnessing strong growth in the number of GSM subscribers despite the global economic slowdown on account of low mobile services and cheap handsets.
Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) said, the Indian mobile operators added a record 7.7 Million new GSM subscribers in October 2008 despite the signs of slowing economy had started appearing, as reported by ciolnews.
According to the data released by COAI that represents nine telecos, the total number of GSM subscribers reached 241.4 Million in October 2008, an increase of 3.3% from 233.7 Million in September 2008. The figures for October 2008 did not include subscribers of Reliance Communication, which mainly provides CDMA connections but has GSM customers as well. The total number of wireless users using Reliance services reached 56.1 Million by end of September 2008.
The rapid expansion of the Indian mobile subscriber base is accredited to strong policy and regulatory system in the country. Moreover, the Indian mobile industry is the world’s fastest growing industry and second-largest next to China only. This is due to high adoption of mobile services in rural areas and low tariff structure. Wireless mobile networks along with low-priced handsets have also contributed significantly in raising the number of subscribers.
However, India, the third largest economy in Asia, is struggling to cope up with the effects of global financial meltdown forcing operators and policy makers to lower their growth expectations. On the other hand, industry analysts believe that the demand for telecom services will remain intact though the economic growth has slowed down.
Moreover, with the coming of advanced technologies and improved quality, mobile phones have permeated into all layers of the society. There is a tremendous rise in use of “more-than-voice” applications - also known as Mobile 2.0 applications. These apps include a big part of services that were traditionally provided on the net, like information publications, transactions and information retrieval.
According to a Research Analyst at RNCOS, “Despite global economic slowdown, the Indian mobile industry is growing at a rapid pace primarily due to low tariffs and affordable handsets, and integration of advanced technology and business-friendly regulations. While India will take a long time to spread landline telecom network and high-speed broadband service nationwide, it will leave China behind in number of mobile users in next few years.”
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