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India rural market to drive wireless growth

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE, INDIA: The Indian wireless market will have 500 million subscribers base by 2010 and rural India will be the major contributor to the growth.

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"Wireless subscribers numbers as on September stands at 210 million. Current wireless market growth is more in A and B cities. But in coming years C cities will gain traction especially in voice connectivity,” said Ravikiran A, customization center head for business support systems, NokiaSiemens Networks, India.

Speaking at a session on Domestic Market- Wireless Infrastructure, at BangaloreIT.in on Tuesday, Ravikiran said: “What Indian wireless users currently need is economic solutions, always being connected, simplicity of usage and personalized services. The challenge is to provide affordable coverage in rural villages."

Tier B cities need network availability and Tier A and metros look for better rich user experience. Urban market is innovation ground for new technology like 3G/4G, he added.

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Ravikiran said that prepaid users have been the major drivers for the wireless market in India. “They (prepaid users) have contributed about 88 per cent of the wireless market growth. Other contributors are 38.02 million mobile internet users, growing VAS market, declining device cost, declining ARPU and high churn rates,” said Ravikiran.

Going ahead over 5 billion people will be connected through the world by 2015. What is needed are: affordable connectivity solutions, user centric services, broadband, applications on internet and multitude business model.

He also informed that most of the fixed traffic would move from voice to data, video, multimedia and TV services.

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