WASHINGTON – Mobile phones are having a major impact across the Indian sub-continent. Socioeconomic and census data show that mobile phones massively outnumber landlines in rural India.
All told, 68% of households have a mobile phone while only 1% have just a landline and 2.7% have both. The Indian government recently released the final version of the 2011 Socioeconomic and Caste Census.
The report is a snapshot of the condition of India’s 1.3 billion people taken over a two-year period. The census made several other startling revelations, such as the fact that despite there being two mobile phones for every three households, there was only one salaried job for every 10 households.
The distribution in mobile phone ownership was also unbalanced across India’s 36 territories. In Chhattisgarh, a central poverty-stricken state, 71% of citizens owned no phone at all, the highest across the entire nation. The total number of households with no phone at all is 28%.
Lack of economic opportunity combined with a booming demand for mobile phones both in India and other nearby south Asian nations has driven the demand for cheap mobile phones to new levels. This, in turn, has created a thriving market for stolen phones. In Odisha, state police arrested a group of boys who were reportedly being paid a salary of 10,000 rupees ($157) per month, to steal smartphones.
India’s leap to mobile phones follows a broader global trend of less-developed nations passing on wireline communications in favor of more flexible mobile devices. Many in the telecom industry see India as the next big frontier for mobile companies, and several domestic firms are doing their best to spur development.
Indus Towers plans to invest $40.7 million to build 1,000 new towers across the Punjab and Haryana states this year. Reliance Jio Infocomm is planning to launch LTE service across India by December and expects to have 6 million subscribers switched over by year-end. Chinese wireless giant ZTE, meanwhile, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Gujart state to begin developing smart city projects.
Despite these planned expansions obstacles still remain. India’s quagmire of labor union laws and overlapping regulations means that coverage and cost benefits vary greatly from state to state. Additionally, threats ranging from terrorism to wildlife have created unique dilemmas to overcome. Despite these obstacles, India’s census data confirms that the world’s largest democracy is rapidly becoming a mobile nation.
