Global business opportunities and lessons for emerging markets:India leading telecommunications growth

摘要

Developing countries have presently low telecommunication services penetration due to lack of ICT(Information and Communication Technologies)infrastructure,which is common handicap in almost all the developing countries.As economic growth and social benefits are strongly correlated with efficient digital infrastructure,the governments in these countries are giving due priority for the development of modern infrastructure and hence,there is high potential for fast growth of telecommunication services.Moreover, most of the developing countries,with little legacy networks,have the advantage to bring in modern proven technologies for providing multi-services for mobility,voice,data and video.India,a developing country in South Asia,with a population of over one billion people has low overall telephony penetration of nearly 22 percent of the population,but in metros and cities the penetration is nearly 48 percent compared to rural penetration of 6 percent.The growth of mobile telephony services is leading the telecom revolution in India with nearly six million subscribers being added per month and this has brought the world focus on what is being termed as the fastest growing telecom market in the world. While in cities the demand is for most advanced means of communication with facilities at par with that in any part of the world,in rural areas the telecom is yet to reach most of the people.Cheaper rentals,lower tariffs and falling handset prices bring in more customers particularly over the increasingly expanding networks in uncovered areas. Enabling e-services through low cost broadband connectivity in rural areas is the need for which pictures,interactive video along with voice and data best serve the required applications.Comparison between China and India always generate interest in any forum,where growth of telecom in Asia is discussed.Though the challenges in India and China are different,but both the biggest emerging markets have achieved impressive results in their telecom infrastructure development.In China the government administrative functions have been successfully combined with corporate management functions to centralize the development of nation-wide telecom networks,whereas most developing countries have privatized competitive markets,as in India. rnThe vast Indian telecom market offers business opportunities to global carriers,vendors and investors as major part of telecom subscriber growth now comes from such emerging markets.In developing countries,there are,however,challenges of availability of funds needed to extend the networks in uncovered areas with selection of suitable technologies and innovative business models to build world-class networks.As regards regulatory framework,the Indian telecom sector is fast maturing with sound government policies;regulator clarity conducive to open competition and this has attracted unprecedented business interest from global telecom players.A number of collaborations with foreign telecom companies are already working successfully and negotiations for more such joint ventures in rolling out of networks,managing services, manufacturing and R&D are going on.Government of India is favorably considering on allowing foreign players to bid for 3G space.The factors that can put brakes on the faster growth in India are early resolving of spectrum crunch and associated regulatory hurdles.100,000 Community Service Centers with low cost broadband connectivity with interactive video and specially created content in local languages are being set up,as a project of Government of India,in rural areas supporting farmers,e-governance, telemedicine,e-education and other citizen services.Funds under Universal Service Obligation Scheme are available with the Government of India but are required to be utilized efficiently.Advanced wireless services platforms based on technologies like 3G and WiMAX can provide voice,data and video in mobile configurations and are expected to have an edge over other technologies in terms of cost,fast rollout,improved QoS, efficiency and reliability.For education in remote areas and tribal belts in India,Project ‘Edusat’,having 60,000 virtual classrooms through satellite communications,with centrally developed content in local languages provides opportunities to children and youth.India’s success story of fast growth of mobile communications is being watched by a number of developing countries,and some of the innovative steps like targeting first time users of phones and the exploding youth with locally developed content of games/ music;maintaining low but healthy ARPU as this promotes faster growth;and infrastructure sharing to lower the costs etc.could be useful lessons for the emerging markets.