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Phones and Wi-Fi Mobile handsets are a second likely path for Wi-Fi growth in India. As of February 2009, India has more than 375 million cellular subscribers, falling just behind China in terms of total subscribers. The number of new subscribers has been growing each month; in January 2009 thirteen million new subscribers were added. India is currently the fastest growing cellular market.
In the near term much of India's cellular growth will come from network expansion in rural areas, driving a commensurate increase in sales of feature phones. In urban and semi-urban areas, sales of smart phones and data-capable phones are increasing as young professionals have come to see mobile phones as status symbols. Wi-Fi technology is a highly desirable feature in the smart phone category worldwide and it is expected that as that segment becomes more established in India, sales of Wi-Fi capable phones will also grow.
Wi-Fi service providers see opportunity in the growing number of Wi-Fi enabled handsets. Providers like O-Zone Networks are launching initiatives offering citywide coverage with business models based on subscriber revenue. This emerging breed of Wi-Fi service provider was profiled in Wi-Fi Alliance's March 2008 report titled: Wi-Fi Technology Enabling Economic and Social Development in Rural and Urban India. Wi-Fi in the Enterprise
India's enterprises require converged networks that can carry voice, video and data seamlessly and deliver throughput suitable for real-time communications. The reliability, security, scalability and performance of Wi-Fi networks support essential corporate applications in corporate home offices, and have allowed companies to expand operations into more remote locations. As companies expand operations and establish work sites outside major metropolitan locations, network connectivity and availability have proven to be an increasing challenge.
Hospitality, information technology (IT), IT enabled services (ITES) and business process outsourcing (BPO) industries are the main enterprise users of Wi-Fi. However, demand for Wi-Fi is also driven by industrial verticals like manufacturing, mining and other industries that own large facilities with many buildings.
Leading system integrators report that a large number of Indian enterprises have adopted Wi-Fi for the productivity benefits associated with wireless connectivity. Most enterprise customers we spoke to confirmed use of Wi-Fi at the work place to allow their employees freedom of working away from their desks.
The infrastructure challenges in India have also created enterprise adoption patterns for Wi-Fi that address specific enterprise needs. In countries with almost ubiquitous broadband, most enterprises had wired LAN in place and wireless LAN (WLAN) was added later to enhance productivity. However, in emerging countries such as India, small/medium enterprises are completely doing away with wired LAN.
So they do have a broadband connection (Leased Line, DSL or other broadband connection) coming to office, which then is shared via only Wi-Fi without wired LAN connectivity at all. Many small and medium enterprises are housed in buildings that have no in-built provisions for Local Area Networking cabling and choose Wi-Fi to overcome this problem as well.
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