India: Seventh Cheapest Country for Mobile Services

Digital technology has boosted growth, expanded opportunities, and improved service delivery to a great extent. With all the steps being made in the right direction, the outlook for ‘make-in-India’ digital plan looks really bright. India is the seventh cheapest country in the world to own a mobile phone with the average monthly cost of Rs 196 in 2015 against Rs 188.5 in 2014.

According to the World Bank’s recent World Development Report (WDR) ‘Digital Dividends’, Brazil ranked lowest with the cost of mobile services at Rs 3253 per month, followed by Ireland with Rs 2,959 and the UK with Rs 2,870. Sri Lanka is the country with cheapest rates for using a mobile phone at Rs 64 month followed by Bangladesh Rs 95 and Iran Rs 150.

The World Bank report stated- “Currently about 100 crore people in India are offline. But the mobile internet can effectively fill the gap. In Bihar, with no electricity or all-weather roads-poor farmers benefit from digitally enabled agricultural extension services from an NGO -Digital Green-that trains farmers using locally produced how-to videos. This is an example which proves the strength of mobile internet,”

India is estimated to have 37.1 crore mobile internet users by June 2016. The country will attract 6.5 crore new mobile internet users by then. “Customers, especially youngsters are now connected to the internet using mobile phones. Hence, it will play a crucial role in transforming the country,” said Abhijit Kishore, Business Head-Kerala of Vodafone India.

Nearly 90 crore Indians have been issued Aadhaar cards in the past five years aiming at complete digitization of country. And with government all set to provide a legal back-up to the Aadhaar platform, it seems that adding the mobile number to Aadhar cards will streamline many policies and payments. This will help in person-to-person payment and also be a cost-effective manner with the usage of less cash.

The people in the lower layers of the society are most importantly getting benefited from the mobile digital revolution. The latest example is Fisher Friend app with more than 500 users, jointly developed by Qualcomm India and MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, now live in Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The Qualcomm report shows that the mobile application has helped in the rescue of more than 40 fishermen who were caught in bad weather conditions by Fisher Friend through which they could communicate their GPS location to the coast guard. Including the GPS feature, the apps ability to provide information on wind speed and wave height is considered to be the most popular features of the Fisher Friend application.