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Cellphone net access 14 times more than broadband
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 19 December 2007, 01:30 IST
Mumbai: The Internet access over cell phone has doubled over last year reveals a latest figure from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The factors for this are falling prices of handsets, reasonable connectivity prices and the convenience of an easy-to-carry mobile device, reports the Business Standard.
According to TRAI the number of Indians using their mobiles to logon to the Internet has increased from 16 million in 2006 to 38 million in 2007 (both GSM and CDMA).
The number of broadband subscribers as on October 30, 2007, was 2.69 million and there are about 22 million PCs in the country, with just 30 to 40 percent of them with Internet access.
This implies that Internet access through mobiles is at least six times more than that through PCs, and nearly 14 times more than broadband access.
Operators of both GSM and CDMA mobile technology services have registered double growth in users accessing the Internet via mobile.
"In any quarter, 10 percent of this user base accesses the internet through mobile handsets," said a Bharati spokesperson.
"This shows there is tremendous interest among people to use mobile devices to access the Internet. We believe this is growing at a conservative estimate of 10 to 15 percent across the industry," said Krishna Durbha, Head Business and Marketing, Application solutions and content, Reliance Communication.
According to research firm Gartner stated that Indian mobile data revenue is expected to outpace that of voice services and contribute to about a fifth of total revenues by 2011, doubling year-on-year.