In the long run, observed Nicholas Negroponte, there would be no difference between mobile and wireless. "Ultimately, all the spectrum would be reserved for things that move," he noted in his celebrated book, Being Digital.

And people are essentially beings—if not things—that move. By the extension of Negroponte’s logic, the primary means of connecting them to each other is wireless.

According to ITU data for the year 2001 (the latest available), as many as 95 countries in the world had a higher penetration of mobile phones than fixed phones. And not to mention, the mobile growth rate was much higher than the fixed growth rate. But which are these countries? They, of course, do include the mobile-savvy Nordic countries and Western Europe. But the largest group of them, 31 countries to be precise, comes from one of the least developed regions in the world—Africa. These are countries like Cameroon (teledensity 2.71 per hundred people, mobile phone as a percentage of total phones: 75.3 percent), Congo (teledensity 5.33, mobile phones 87.4 percent), Madagascar (teledensity 1.25, mobile phones 71.6 percent), and Uganda (teledensity 1.72, mobile phones 83.5 percent). They have realized that going mobile is faster, cheaper, and by far, the only means for them to catch up with the rest of the world. While we in India, with a similar teledensity of about 4 are busy debating what exactly should be the difference between a basic phone and a mobile phone, for these underdeveloped nations, the basic phone is a mobile phone. The two words are just synonymous.

Well, this column it is not an indirect way of introducing an analysis on the great Indian telecom debate of 2003—the COAI vs ABTO. It is about a realization—so accurately prophesied by Negroponte—that mobile is by far a better mean to connect people, especially in the countries and regions where they are not so well-connected. This is about a realization that if we have to provide what NTP 94 called ‘telephones for all’ and ‘telephones within the reach of all’, there is no way other than mobile.

That’s not a great observation. Everyone in the telecom fraternity, in varying degrees, agrees to this. Of late, there also have been attempts to measure the national teledensity taking both fixed and mobile numbers together.

But measuring teledensity is one thing. Promoting mobile as the primary telephone for people is another. We need to be much more proactive on that front. From the beginning, like the West, and unlike developing countries, we have positioned mobile as a premium service—calling it a value added service. Yes, it does a good value add by providing mobility. But as Negroponte says, mobility is intrinsic to wireless and it is wrong to put a stamp of premium service solely because of that.

That is exactly what the new Telecom Tariff Order of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has acknowledged while trying to make mobile more affordable. That if you want to connect people, mobile is the way. Fixed phones connect buildings, not people. The missing piece now for the mobile (no distinction please between technologies) is the handset price. By making the users stay in their networks and spend a specified amount per month, operators can subsidize and/or arrange financing for the handset. This will lower the cost of acquisition and grow the market exponentially.

Consider this: Many of our national highways and state highways are now part of the mobile coverage map. Many villages are situated alongside these highways. The cost to the operator for providing a mobile connection in such villages is zero. So is the cost of maintaining that connection. Had the running cost for a mobile user been a little low, many would have acquired a mobile connection in those villages. And it is not too difficult either. By a simple decision, the government can lower the tariff for villages and instead of compensating for digging of streets, the USO fund could be used to subsidize services to an extent.

Mobile actually makes it possible to ‘cover’ villages more easily and makes that ‘coverage’ exactly measurable. At any time, if a village is covered by a base station, it is covered by the telephone network and theoretically connected to the whole world. It is a question of activating a phone to avail of the services.

We love discussing issues that the developed markets are concerned with. But probably we have much to learn from the African countries and even our neighbors like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, who have taken to mobile much more seriously. We need a gameplan to promote mobile decisively—it does not matter whether that is by using GSM, CDMA or both—as the primary mode of connecting people of India.

A mobile phone can be a basic phone. And a better one at that.