Mobile Phones Raise Income for Rural Poor in India

By in Mobile Phones

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Mobile phones in Rural India

Mobile Phones are now a basic necessity. It provides job opportunities for most of the rural people. For instance, the mobile provides the balloon seller timely information about the crowd gatherings, which is his potential market.

Secondly, the handset comes in handy for the watermelon vendor during the nine months of off-season to find work as repairman. Next comes thousands of artisans, who are finding that the mobile phone connects them to their markets and even opens new markets for them.

A meeting organized by Bharat Exhibitions at Telecom CEO Conclave has discussed the above issues in detail to project the expansion of the mobile phone network.

The conclave was headed by Shri K Sridhara, Member – Technology DOT, Ministry of Communications & IT, Stefen Rust – Global Head of Marketing & Strategic Development for Communications Media, Sun Microsystems Inc, T V Sriram – Bharti Airtel vice-president, Industry analyst Arpita Pal Agarwal – Associate Director of Pricewatehouse Coopers (PwC), Jagbir Singh – CTO – Mobility, Bharti Airtel Limited, Vijay Yadav – UT Starcom Managing Director, S. C. Khanna – Association of United Service Providers of India Secretary- General, Ramesh C Mamgain Director – Telecom, Sun Microsystems, K. K. Peringhat – UTStarcom sales Director and Shri N K Goyal – Chairman Emeritus, Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association (TEMA).

In this panel discussion, video came out to be the most popular and relevant application in the rural area because of the illiteracy in the rural place. Thus, mobile service providers should combine voice and video for multiple uses, eliminating the use of data, text SMSes.

Jagbir Singh pointed out a few problems that are faced by the mobile service, in rural areas, in getting the power connection and then regular power supply for the mobile sites to function. Moreover, back up solar power or other sources boosts up the cost. Because of the low population density in rural areas, more towers and higher ones are demanded that further increase the costs. Language, which has no written script, is also one of the problems.

Now, to enhance the mobile phone subscription, few important points were highlighted:

  • The platform of the networks enable rural users to access a wide range of services that gave end user value in the rural context Java
  • Offers VoIP (voice on Internet Protocol) and develop software like Skype to provide low cost long distance voice service
  • Volume game and additional services like advertisements should be pursued so that service to the user would be economic at a very low cost
  • Simplifying product access, offering customer centric solutions like songs, music, hello tunes that are popular and sharing infrastructure
  • Combine both wireless and wireline technologies for a richer user experience

    • One Response

    1. kiranraj

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