
Rural India Snaps Up Mobile Phones  - prakash
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123413407376461353.html
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visitor4rmindia
Mobile phones sales are doing well not just in the rural areas but in the
bigger cities as well. Everyone has one - from the guy who drives me in an
auto to the maid who comes in to clean my house.

And their mobiles are usually really good models too - better than mine most
of the time. It's stuff like this that gives me hope that India is getting
upwardly mobile [ excuse the pun :-) ].

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ponnap
Most of the revenue generated by cell phone service providers through their
walled gardens seems to be from voice and not data. It would be interesting to
see how long these service providers would continue to be profitable given
their decreasing margins. Usage of the so called smart phones that help
provide value added data services is not to be found in large numbers. Also,
access to data is pretty expensive (when compared to the quality of service
offered in the US). There have been instances of a few startups that have
worked around this problem of expensive data services.

For example, there is this startup that strips and forwards email from lets
say gmail, yahoo etc to an email associated with the cell phone number as an
SMS for a very low price. SMS seems to be a very viable and inexpensive
solution to target a large user base.

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visitor4rmindia
Could you explain why you say that margins are decreasing for voice calls? My
mobile bill hasn't changed much over the last few years.

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ponnap
I am not sure why your cell phone bill has not changed much over the past few
years. However, a quick Google search returned these results, and this
information seems to be at least two years old:

<http://in.rediff.com/money/2007/jan/10mobile.htm>
[http://money.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?sid=10&cid=13...](http://money.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?sid=10&cid=133&articleid=6332)

"Bharti Airtel is investing $2 billion in 2006-07 to ensure the 'death of
distance', which, hopefully, will further bring down call charges by 15-20 per
cent. Moreover, with sharing of infrastructure among operators and the reduced
burden of revenue sharing for universal access service licence (UASL), basic
and cellular mobile service providers will lower operating costs and the
benefits may again be passed on to the consumer.

Bottomline: If you pay Re 1 a minute for a local call today, you may have to
pay 80 paise for the same tomorrow. Talk is cheap, tech is chief."

Thats a 20% reduction in margin.

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visitor4rmindia
Thanks. You're right - I did a couple of google searches too and they all came
up with "lowered tarrifs".

I've just checked around though, and it doesn't seem to have made much of an
impact on many people's bills (at least in my office). Maybe we compensate by
calling more or longer.

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jyothi
There is an enormous opportunity here. Agriculture is a huge vertical which is
operating inefficiently in India today. One short of finances and second
directions.

Micropayment startups like Dhanax are really enabling farmers on #1 and now
with broader reach if someone can enable #2 more effectively, it can
essentially improve lives of one of a billion people.

Vision problem in Indian agriculture is a more complex issue.

