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In 498 Aryabhatta gave the world the digit "0" (zero) for which he became immortal. This set into motion and bought into play a paradigm shift in the fields of mathematics and Astronomy, and spread to other fields in the years to come. The Binary code used in Today's digital world, uses two-binary digits one them being "0”.

The next year, 2010 ends with 0, and will perhaps be the harbinger of a paradigm shift of a similar magnitude in various fields which may be unleashed by the telecommunications industry.

India's telecommunications industry is booming, and the country's mobile-phone market is one of the fastest growing in the world. India added 113.26 million new customers in 2008, the largest globally. From 1995 with Telecom Operators Charging Rs 32 per minute and Rs. 16 for incoming calls, India now has become the country with the lowest calling rates, with call rates are as low as Rs.0.50 per minute with free unlimited incoming calls.

The country's cellular base witnessed close to 50 per cent .growth in 2008, with an average 9.5 million customers added every month. The year 2009 saw a similar trend with mobile-phone subscribers rising to 427.29m by June 2009, driven by rising incomes, greater competition, increase d penetration in rural areas, falling rates, prepaid options and aggressive marketing campaigns. ARPU's of operators dropped from Rs. 205 and Rs. 99 in March 2009 to Rs. 185 and Rs. 92 in June 2009 for GSM and CDMA respectively.

Telecom wars

TTSL has been largely instrumental in pulling down the telecom tariffs to a new low with its per-second tariff. Earlier, it was RCom, which created a similar impact in the market when the Ambanis entered the telecom industry in 2005 with 40 paise per call tariff. Competition has yielded rich dividends for the consumers, giving them the lowest tariffs in the world.

Now, with operators having no price differentiation, quality will be the driver for growth. Also this will most likely lead the valuation model to move from subscriber based one to a model based on margins and minutes of usage.

With the lowest tariffs in the world, industry analyst have started raising questions on the viability of the business. With MNP round the corner where a subscriber move to another service provider it is unlikely that the tariffs will rise from here. Also, on the other hand a further decrease also looks unlikely and we expect the tariffs to stabilize at this juncture.

India's the lowest tariff plans in the world and competition among mobile operators is set to increase further with operators coming up with price plans to offset those unveiled by their rivals which may lead to hyper-competition in 2010.

“This rapid re-basing in pricing by an incumbent will seriously affect and threaten smaller, regional and startup operators, perhaps shortening the period before which industry consolidation inevitably takes place," Macquarie said in its research report.

In such a scenario, smaller telecom players could be forced to shut shop as they would be unable to keep up with the competitive market forces at play and are likely to eventually sell off their operations to bigger operators, experts believe.

Smart Phones

With the drop in prices of data plans, high end mobile phones and the introduction of 3G, the stage is set for the Smart phone to become the leading portable device in India.

The driving factors for the increase in the use of smartphones in the urban market was the need for real-time access to information and on-demand access to applications such as e-mail, calendar, contact and other information round the clock by people who are continuously on the move and those who want to keep in touch with the office mails.

However the major hurdle for smartphone usage remains affordability and the downloading speed. The smartphone will continue gaining popularity in India especially in the upper middle class urban market.

VAS

Already estimated at more than USD 1 Billion in 2009, the MVAS industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 50% and help the Service Providers arrest the fall in their ARPU's and improve their profit margins. Today, 90% of Operators revenues come from Voice and Rentals. Of the balance 5% comes from SMS's and MVAS accounts for only about 5% of revenue. With the overall wireless subscriber base almost up to 500 Million, strong growth in the subscriber base of the telecom sector is also taking the business of mobile VAS to new heights in the country.

* Mobile Infotainment: In 2009, the most popular mobile value added services were songs and ringtone downloads, mobile games and mobile advertising. With the rise of reality shows, interactive participation in TV and Radio game shows and contests has already gained tremendous popularity. Given India's demographics where more than 50% of the population is under the age of 30, infotainment is most likely to be the service that will run up the operators ARPU's in 2010.

* Video Conferencing is also increasing companies are cutting down their traveling to reduce costs and also for security reasons. This trend will not only help reduce costs but also reduce the Carbon footprint of physical travel.

* Mobile advertising in India can be said to be still at a nascent stage. Yet, with an estimated 80 million television sets in the country and about five million PCs as of 2009, Mobile wins as a medium with the highest reach in the country and the potential remains extremely high. 2009 saw a dramatic rise in Mobile advertising through the two main delivery mechanisms i.e. Voice and SMS. Mobile sms Advertising will likely shift from being a mass advertising medium to selected targeting which will be based on subscriber profiling.

Approximately 72.2% of the population of India live in about 638,000 villages. Government statistics hold the national literacy to be around 60%. With an estimated 302.5 million illiterate, equal to the population of Russia, half the world's illiterates live in India. Recent findings by Suresh Tendulkar Committee show that around 41.8 percent of the total rural population survives on a meager Rs. 447 of monthly per-capita consumption expenditure. For decades, Rural India has been plagued with the problems of illiteracy, poverty and exploitation. These challenges in the Rural India present the Telecommunications Industry unlimited opportunities. The World Bank's World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty identifies three crucial elements of poverty reduction efforts: opportunity, empowerment, and security. Experiences in rural India show that information and communications technology can enhance poor people's opportunities by improving their access to markets, health care and education.

* Education: One such successful example of this is The Stanford Learning Lab that has created a prototype SMS quiz to aid learning of new vocabulary. The aim of this project was to provide highly flexible, mobile learning material that users could access in very short time-spans ranging from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. The constraints of the 160 character limit of SMS messages turned out to be an advantage as it forced the construction of suitably concise chunks for such short-term learning opportunities.

* Healthcare: Apollo Hospital group has set up a 50-bed telemedicine center at Aragonda village (Andhra Pradesh, South India). It has also set up freestanding centers at Guwahati and Kolkata. These centers are equipped with facilities like CT- scan, X-ray, ECG and integrated laboratory and are linked to Apollo's specialized hospitals at Hyderabad, Chennai, and Delhi for seeking referral services, second opinion, post-acute care, interpretation services and health education. The hospital group has also a web portal, Apollo Life that allows patients to interact with doctors via the web, upload all their diagnostics and reports on the net. Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre (EHIRC), Delhi through its Escorts Heart Alert Service (EHAS), Utilizes telemedicine in establishing prompt contact with patients in distress. The EHAS subscribers can record their ECG's at the time of discomfort through the cardiac beeper provided and transmit them through a telephone to the "heart alert centre". These tele-ECG"s can be monitored 24-hours at the dedicated center and fully equipped mobile cardiac care units from the centre can be rushed to provide intensive care to the patients before they brought to the hospital for medical investigation. Furthermore, Technology Development Program for Telemedicine by The Ministry of Information Technology aims to link three premier medical institutions All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi; the Post graduate Institute (PGI), Chandigarh; and the Sanjay Gandhi Medical Institute at Lucknow for realizing tele-diagnosis, tele-consultancy and tele-education.

* Access to Opportunity: With the advent of 3G, fishermen can negotiate prices for their catch before heading for shore by sending in pictures of the type of fish they have on board. Similarly, farmers and horticulturalists who have perishable produce can take advantage of 3G services to bargain for the best prices before harvesting, by bypassing middlemen.

Services like Mobile Banking, Mobile Money Transfers, Utility Bill Payments, Payments for purchase of movie tickets etc are also likely to take off.

Already, 670,000 route kilometers (419,000 miles) of optical fibres has been laid in India by the major operators, even in remote areas and the process continues. A rural network based on the extensive optical fibre network, using Internet Protocol and offering a variety of services and the availability of open platforms for service development, viz. the Next Generation Network, appears to be an attractive proposition. Fibre network can be easily converted to Next Generation network and then used for delivering multiple services at cheap cost.

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