May 10, 2012

Power of Mobile Internet in India!


Hi Guys,

Do you use mobile phone to access internet? If your answer is yes, then you contribute to one half of Internet population in India. Yes, one half of Indians use mobile phones to access internet. It was 2% in January 2009 and in a span of 3 years it has become 48% in April 2012. Maybe, by this time it would have crossed 50%

Most of the times, I browse through PC, but mobile has been a great companion for me. Mobile Internet users can be broadly classified into two types. The first one comprises of people who do not have access to PC or broadband or who feel broadband is expensive (a survey shows that Indian people are ready to spend Rs. 50 per month on an average). The second category is people, who use mobile to browse while travelling or not being at home. I belong to the second category.

Mobile Internet offers great tariffs. There are packages for 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 1 month, 2 months, etc depending on service providers. So, whenever I am travelling I activate the 1 day pack for which I will ultimately spend very less. The main purpose I would need internet while travelling is to check mails, to access Facebook and to see any other important site. Many of my friends who stay outside use mobile phones as modem. They use monthly packs and it is both cheap and good enough for browsing.

Two years back, when I started using Internet on mobile, the speed was very low and connection was very poor. At many places, the towers won’t support EDGE (which is an advanced version of GPRS which enables high speed). These days the speeds have improved a lot (am speaking of 2G technology) and so have the infrastructure.

A month back, the modem in my home went berserk and hence I was not able to use broadband. I used my mobile as a modem and it was very handy.  The speed was not great, but it was good enough to browse and download basic stuffs. I was amazed to see speeds of 200 Kbps which is one tenth of my broadband speed.

If we are able to get such good speeds in 2G, then surely 3G would be superb. There are lot of issues with infrastructure and tariff. But remember that it is just blooming. Recently tariffs have been slashed hard. Earlier I had a doubt whether 3G will be successful in India. But in 2 years time, I think lot of people will start using 3G.

With lot of websites becoming mobile friendly (even my blog is mobile friendly – set so in blogger settings) and increase in sales of smart phones, I think browsing in Mobile would be as good as browsing in PC. With decrease in costs of smart phones and improvement in Infrastructure of service providers, definitely India is all set to become a Mobile Browsing country.

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Happy Reading!!!

5 comments:

  1. I agree with your views. Internet surely has seen a lot of revolution especially in the mobile sector. With many youngsters having 24*7 access to their cell phones and the rise of networking through social media, it is difficult to imagine a life without mobile internet connectivity today. I myself prefer to surf blogs and other activities through mobile internet even during times when I am not travelling! Nice insightful post, Karthick. Wish you all the best :)

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  2. thanks all for your comments :)

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