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In 1994, Raman Murthy moved to Delhi from Sirkakulam in Andhra Pradesh, for his first job. He would begin the day's
work at 10 am, after reaching his office. Murthy would first go through the faxes that filled one-fourth of his desk, underlining important points and putting his remarks on the side, for discussion with his boss at 11 am. At around noon, he would go out for meeting clients. After coming back at 4 pm, he would make phone calls to some of those who asked for him while he was out. He had no mobile; his managing director had one. He had applied for a landline connection at home, which was to come a year later...

Murthy has been promoted twice since and is a senior manager now. Ravi Prasad, who works in Murthy's earlier position, hardly finds any faxes waiting for him when he walks in the office. He logs on to his computer, and checks e-mails first thing in the morning.

A hundred odd messages await him in the inbox, 60 of which, of course, are spams while about 20 are subscribed newsletters. The rest are relevant. Prasad deletes spams with practiced ease, then reads and answers the mails, depending on the importance of the sender and the subject. Simultaneously, he logs on to the instant messenger and exchanges pleasantries with 'buddies' online. Later, while in field, Prasad's clients reach him on his mobile phone, paid for by the company.

That's just a glimpse of how the mobile and the Internet have brought about changes in the manner we work and live today. While the impact of the Internet is more on urban and educated communities, the mobile has made a significant difference to rural masses as well.

Mobile: Personal Factor
Apart from making telephony an anytime, anywhere affair, the mobile has also put the individual into focus.

When a call is made to a landline number, chances of the same person answering it every time can be low. More often than not, different people will attend it at different times. On the other hand, it can be quite disappointing if not shocking if a new person answers a mobile call.

Clearly, a mobile number is closely associated with the identity of the person who has it. On the other hand, landline numbers are mostly agnostic to identities of persons who pick them up.

A mobile phone adds a statement-fashion, class, et al-to an individual's personality. No wonder, mobile phone makers introduce new models at ultra high frequencies nowadays. The target segments could range from regular, youth, working women, enterprises, businessmen, and so on.

For those subscribers whose mobile usage is limited to voice and simple text messaging, entry-level models seem just fine enough. However, when these very subscribers have a large number of contacts, they go for models having 32k phone books. The youth, especially people in the age group of 18–25, may have a crush for models with multimedia capabilities, in-built camera, and of course, a high-res color screen. Then there are models with 'macho' features, and yet others with 'feminine' qualities.

It is through mobile phones only that the concept of short messaging service (SMS) has caught on. Landline service providers also offer the service now, but it enjoys quite low usage. This non-intrusive mode of communication was first embraced by the youth segment, but has now found acceptability among all subscriber segments.

Thanks to this peer-to-peer service and some other popular value-added services, people now spend more time with their mobiles than they ever did with their landlines. Also, with features like calculator, stopwatch, alarm clock, FM radio, camera, etc. being ported onto it, the mobile is becoming a multi-functional device. So much so that they have significantly reduced the demand for personal digital assistants (PDAs).

Most of the valued added services (VAS) for the mobile world are designed with the 'personal' factor in mind. Ringtones are a good example.

With both CDMA and GSM service providers now providing 2.5G services on their networks, mobiles will soon be doubling as Internet access devices. While they may not replace the PC for the purpose in the near future, they are bound to initiate some new trends.

The Internet: A Window into the World
Today, what you seek is what you get-literally-over the Internet. If information is power, it's readily available to all and the sundry. The challenge, however, lies in digging it out, though there are tools to do that also-on the Internet itself.

But more than an info platform, it's become quite an extension of the brick-and-mortar world. And the best part is that the infrastructure only gets better with each passing year.

Already, people pay their electricity and telephone bills online in many cities. The more Internet-savvy also do e-commerce transactions with little hitch.

A large number of people now do rail reservations through the IRCTC site, already credited with being the largest e-com operation in India. "It saves me the trouble and the time, and does away with the need to depend on agents. Best, I can look at all the availabilities at my pace, with nobody asking me to hurry up," says Aditya Prakash, who has stopped going to reservation counters for bookings. Online cancellation, however, is not an equally satisfying experience, especially because the money comes back after a considerable lag. Once that's addressed, Prakash intends to stop going to booking counters.

A lesser number of people purchase other products and services over the Internet, and some are comfortable enough to try hands at bids, which range from air tickets to consumer products.

Match finder and dating sites are also getting very successful. As the Internet allows a person to maintain anonymity as longer he or she wishes to, communicating is easier. Also, one can ignore the other person if the latter starts getting rude or indecent. Hundreds of thousands of people have so far advertised on these sites and a good number of them have successfully met or married.

The most popular application over the Internet, apart from browsing, remains chat. Both public and private chat rooms, and instant messengers enjoy huge user bases in India.

With ever-new functionalities being added to messengers, they are emerging as a powerful medium of communication. In fact, instant messaging companies have entered into tie-ups with telecom companies worldwide to add VoIP support to their products.

Chain Effects
The mobile and the Internet created new communities of empowered subscribers; the sense of empowerment coming through various aspects-mobility, access to information, functionality of the device, etc.

Empowerment generated demand, which in turn expanded the market. That led to a more competitive scenario, followed by policy changes and bandwidth improvement.

Of all the things, most important has been the steep tariff drops. That has made the services affordable for many rather than for few. Increasingly, the affordability of services is becoming less of an issue. More emphasis is being laid on the expansion and availability of the network.

The benefits, however, have not come without a price. The mobile and the Internet have introduced new cultural, social, and psychological challenges for parents, organizations, and governments. But that's been true of other media-the cinema and the television-too.

One often comes across physical as well as emotional ailments arising out excessive usage of the mobile phone or addiction to chat on the instant messenger. Nevertheless, expert and medical consultations are now readily available for tackling such problems.

Modern technologies do have the property of creating awe and captivating people for a ransom, but a rational approach always helps.

Ultimately, it's the net value offered by the technology that makes it acceptable. People don't mind giving it more room and making adjustments in lifestyles.

Deepak Kumar