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India's Rural Mobile Subscribers Rise
Techtree News Staff, Jul 14, 2009 1613 hrs ISTIncrease 18 percent over last year
With the urban mobile market nearly saturated, India is looking towards its villages and towns to propel the growth of this sector and it indeed is growing. According to the latest numbers from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the number of rural mobile subscribers has surged past the 100 million mark and now stands at a staggering 109.7 million. This data is for the end of the first quarter of 2009. This also translates into a growth of 18 percent over the last quarter of 2008.
While the overall subscriber base in the country stands at 391.76 million, the rural growth was in the earlier stages slow as compared with the urban centres. In fact, even now, with 282 million subscribers, urban centres command a 72 percent of all mobile users in the country. What we are gradually seeing now is a change that is bringing wireless mobility to the interiors of the country.
Mobile companies, both manufactures and operators, seem to have noticed the growing power of India s rural centers and are now concentrating on this hitherto overlooked segment, which presents these companies with an untapped, pristine market at their disposal. Nokia, for example, recently launched its Life Tools directed at the rural population in the country with value added services tailor made for the rural consumer. Other companies too have come up with value added services to boost revenue and tap this huge market.
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