Monthy subscriptions inching towards six million additions per month - 5.9 million of them - are new mobile subscriptions, making India’s net addition the highest in the world, overtaking that of China – though the penetration levels may be lower. This New York Times article shows that china added 5.1 million subscribers, so the Indian run rate is 15% ahead of that of china.
Look at the growth — around 125 million subscribers have signed for mobile services in less than 15 years since the services were launched in the country. India believes that six or seven million monthy new subscriber additions are possible. Clearly liberalization and foreign investments all are helping the country in a big way — after all, the Indian mobile subscription rates are amongst the lowest in the world and handset makers like Nokia are helping the cause by coming in with low cost models and in the process helping India create high tech manufacturing clusters in places like Sriperumpudur, India’s likely answer to Shenzhen.
Three types of operators are alreasy investing here: the OEMs like Nokia, Motorola, the EMSs like Flextronics and Foxconn, and the component manufacturers who work with the OEM and EMS players. Dell is the recent addition planning to set up a manufacturing shop there. It's the most talked about thing in the tech sector today — some of the largest telecom-related opportunties for system integrators/service players are available in India.
Clearly opening up of the economy and the progress of the technology world is helping India advance faster and better — the only eyesore is the Indian infrastructure. I do not want to write about my experience in the Bangalore airport clearing baggage or the time that it took for me to clear immigration on my return via Chennai.
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