Tuesday, November 25, 2014

India Needs Investment for Mobile Broadband to work!

India Needs Investment for Mobile Broadband to work!

Having access to other markets, and access to more information would go a long way towards developing the second most populous country in the world. The ever expanding importance of the internet will positively affect financial services, social services, productivity and also help transportation and really, the possibilities of the Internet are endless.

The impact of better internet service is obvious and we've seen the benefits that derived in several other countries, most notably would be China!

The sad truth is that India is ranked 100th in terms of digital infrastructure. Approximately 100 million people of the 900 million customers have mobile broadband. The connection quality is terrible, often with speeds less than 1 Mbps and much of the time even slower! When you buy or subscribe to something advertised as 3G, you're getting 3G service in name only!

Mobile internet is quickly replacing the home based internet that has been prevalent for much of the past two decades. Mobile internet is the future and in China it is the most important and first choice.

Why, you may wonder? In India most of the allocated bandwidth is committed to the government. The rest is distributed by too many different commercial suppliers.

There are around ten different providers and some would say this is a big part of the problem. With this many providers, the profitability is limited and that leaves little to no room to improve the infrastructure. What can be seen is chaotic inefficiency and the ISP's in India struggle and compete with each other and this all hurts potential revenue.

In order to make mobile broadband to work, India needs to invest more in these networks. Sad and shocking, not even one operator in India is able to deliver true 3G connectivity while most everyone else in developed countries is enjoying 4G, WiFi and even utilizing Bluetooth in the same capacity.

Getting permission to do anything with the infrastructure requires the approval of several local governing offices. A discouraging nightmare. The government absolutely has to come up with a simpler national framework in order for any progress to really take place.

Mobile internet in India is a disaster and the results are obvious, you have an industry in debt with a poor financial outlook, and frustrating customer experiences. These are the bitter realities facing mobile broadband users in India and it's why so few are connected.


India is a great country and I am certain that they will untangle all the bureaucratic obstacles that hinder their progress. It will require assertive leadership with clearly defined goals. Mobile broadband is here to stay and cannot be ignored. They simply need to catch-up to the rest, because being left behind would be devastating!

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