More on 3G Services in India

More on 3G Services in India

Frankly, every new technology makes “waves” with reviewers getting hefty commissions to make sure that it gets “talked about”. I had earlier mentioned about the hoopla behind the 3G services. Fact is that the content service providers are seeing a massive business opportunity behind this. Since, the usual plain vanilla mobile services are no fun. Mobile telephone operators seem to be looking forward for those “killer applications”. Games and ringtone downloads et al are defined as such. All they need is a differential in services. Hence, they are rooting for 3G services.

A new website called as Content Sutra begs to differ in my assessment. It mentions about Pradip Baijal’s forecast about millions of subscribers who would be willing to upgrade to 3 G phones or services when they are introduced. If this isn’t fallacy then what else is? Reason being is that with the introduction of new technology, the prices would be way beyond the reach of a common man- the same person who is bread and butter in terms of numbers. Then, the content delivery services. Airtel Live is a moderate success and people are bitching about the costs behind the same to access the same. I remember, long time back, Airtel had outsourced its “value added services” to a third party content provider with no service level guarantee. I had to call up the customer care service several times to have them resumed.

On other had, there is an interesting “analysis” of the media industry facing up to the challenges of piracy and newer modes of delivery channels. I’d agree to some extent; the numbers are again “estimates” with no clear-cut idea as to how they have been arrived at. 3G services would be a pass; let us hope that TRAI is not foolish enough to waste the spectrum and let these people run riot and make more mess.

This post was submitted by Dr. Abhishek Puri on the Broadband Blog on Techwhack.