Ten years of mobile India
It's been 10 years since mobile telephony was first introduced in India. The mobile industry today has grown 60-fold (from the 1999's figure of 1 million), generates Rs 14500 crore per annum for the government with an annual GDP contribution of Rs 31,000 crore and offers 36 lakh jobs. The figure is likely to increase 30 per cent more over the next 12 months, as per the industry analysts.
Looking back, the industry agrees that while liberalization of the telecom sector in 1992 opened a new chapter in communications, the most defining point has been the National Telecom Policy (NTP) in 1999. It was the NTP 99, which brought the industry back from the brink of collapse. The industry then had accumulated losses nearing Rs 65,000 crore in 1998. The subscriber base was just 1.2 and the networks were making huge losses while they industry faced with the payment of 10-year licence fee amounting to Rs 20,000 crore. The operators couldn't even afford to pay their quarterly installments.
The revenue-sharing arrangement proposed by the NTP 99, miraculously helped the industry absorb some of their losses and bringing down licence fees to Rs 15,000 crore. The 1999 policy also brought down tariffs from Rs 14 to Rs 6 per minute and increased the subscriber base from 1.2 million to 1.88 million in 2000.
The second important move was to open up the sector further and bring in the third and fourth operator. This increased competition and reduced tariffs to around Rs 4 per minute. The introduction of the calling party pays (CPP) regime making all incoming calls to mobile networks free in 2003 grew the subscribers base to 13 million and brought outgoing call rates to Rs 1.60 per minute.
Despite these achievements, the industry feels that it can boost growth by tapping 800 million people, who are outside the purview of cellular networks in the country. Networking the entire country will, however, require investments of around Rs 100,000 crore, almost double the amount that has been invested in the last decade. 3G networks, enabling faster data transaction, are expected to be rolled out by 2006. These will enable next generation applications like mobile payments, telemedicine and e-education through wireless broadband.
Issues like spectrum allocation, taxes and levies, access deficit charge (ADC) and disbursement of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund still remain to be resolved.
Source: bsnl.in
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