2G Saturation, 3G Adoption, 4G Deployment: How is mobile technology doing in India?

India’s mobile subscribers passed the 940 million in June 2012, just short of the world leader, China, which has 950 million.

Understandably, the rate of growth has slowed from double digit millions to 3-5 million subscriptions a month.  These figures are stunning, but what services are available to these users?

3G was only properly deployed in India in 2011 and has had a significant increase, with  Nokia Siemens Networks stating that data traffic generated by 3G services  increased by 78% between December 2011 and June 2012. This has been partly stimulated by low costs, with a price war  amongst the major mobile services providers slashing data rates by up to 80%. There are also low cost 3G handsets  available for around Rs 2000 (£25). This low cost approach of both data and handsets is expected to provide greater internet access  over the mobile phone. This should  increase  Indian internet activity,  which is still quite low compared to the number of mobile subscribers. The youth in smaller cities and towns will be the greatest beneficiaries of this as 3G services are deployed across the country.

Due to India’s low per capita income, it has usually been a laggard in adopting technology. As of 1990 India did not have a mobile phone network. This  is changing.  In March 2012  London deployed its first commercial 4G network.  India followed less than 30 days later with the launch of the 4G network by Airtel in Kolkata. As of June 2012, multiple operators had rolled out 4G services across India, making it one of the largest 4G deployments in the world.

The large operators of Reliance and Airtel are  competing hard to find the most efficient techniques to lay the fibre optic cables that are required to support the massive amount of data 4G users will need  to stream videos or play high-bandwidth games.  They are also looking for companies that can provide them with interesting technology applications around 4G.

As 3G and now 4G are still new, there are questions being asked as to what data services Indian mobile subscribers will buy,  beyond email and social networking. Several experts in the global industry believe that India now has the capacity to leap-frog,  especially on telecommunications technology and create new applications and a way of thinking of where data services would be most relevant. Will India use 4G to watch videos, play games or for some application which becomes very obvious once it is adopted?