TRAI’s last quarter report has an interesting stat that is an eye opener to many of the telecomplayers
- Of the 25 million customers added in the Apr-June quarter, 8 million are from rural areas!
- 70 million mobile users in villages (out of a total 300 million) compared with 40 million in September 2007 (out of 209 million).
- Nearly 75 per cent of mobile users in villages are now owned by private operators.
- mobile handsets costing less than $50 account for 62 per cent of all imported units (as per Yankee group) – source
The biggest impact for operators will be drop in ARPU numbers, but that means a great opportunity for startups/other players to build voice-specific VAS applications.
What’s your opinion?
I wish more than 30%! since the urban market is getting saturated, rural market share would go high. more voice services in regional languages would boost operator’s ARPU !!
regards,
Mano
Could you tell us where you have sourced this data from?. The TRAI report does not have all these numbers which you have posted. Therefore it would be nice if you also mention the source of the posts that you load up here.
the source is already linked in the post – this was not part of TRAI’s pdf, but they had a diff. press release which covered the same
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Paisatune.com, a silicon valley founded company, is the only player in the VAS market pushing hard in the Indian rural market.
Paisatune is where i would put my money, a company definitely to watch out for.
- Nat