MUNDAWAR, Rajasthan: Friday evening, Mundawar played host to a jarring new visitor: Nokia’s traveling mobile phone van. Hundreds of spectators, most men and boys between the ages of 15 and 50, gathered outside or squeezed into the van, hoping to win free merchandise like a Nokia-branded hat.
Mobile phone usage is rising faster in India than anywhere else in the world, with some six million customers added every month…Rural India has become the next frontier for the industry’s biggest players. About 70 percent of India’s 1.1 billion population, 770 million people, live in villages and rural areas.
Nokia has sent two dozen vans staffed with sales representatives on continuous six-month treks through the countryside. The sales reps don’t take orders and they don’t sell phones; instead, their task is to explain why anyone in a small farming community would want a mobile phone in the first place, and a Nokia in particular.
“The object is to establish the concept of phones, and the need for phones,” said Suresh Sundaram, Nokia’s national retail marketing manager in India, who was in Mundawar on Friday with the van.
While fields dominate the landscape here, cellular connections are not a problem. “We can’t catch up to the rate that towers are set up,” Sundaram said.
Unlike the history of extending telephone access to rural America, there’s less inclination to leave it all in the hands of a “benevolent” monopoly like AT&T.
yeh cellphones are very popular in India…and dirt cheap..even the plans. I got, for $10, 1000 minutes when I went there last summer, and I had my GSM phone from here. I used the plan for the whole vacation!
I think I talked to this guy in the picture…he’s a customer service rep, right?
We’re getting raped by the telcos in the U.S.
#3
Unfortunately the telcos aren’t alone… here are some other corporate rapists… banks, cable companies, movie and music companies.
Come on thats not India, it is Venice Beach, CA, From the Sadu-a-GoGo Roller Blade Rental Hut – (shakes his head wondering why you all bought that sell job)
Guys got it made, all his possessions either on his back or in his hand, smoking something really potent and telling his Puja-din-din all about it.
Corrupt, outdated and lazy phone companies are driving cell phone use all over the developing world.
Most phone companies are government monopolies and many are just grinding to a halt. In my personal experience, corruption and laziness are the worst part — you have to bribe to get a line, get it fixed (which it often needs) and just about anything else.
Cell phone services is usually in private industry and tend to work better and be much easier.
They are also MUCH CHEAPER than in America.
My mobile phone bill is $30 a year to maintain the account and about $10 a month for my fairly light usage. (paid by scratch off cards)
My Pakistan mobile is much cheaper than that but my usage is so sporatic that I can’t compare.
What I love about my Pakistan mobile is that the company allows me to direct-dial to many countries via VOIP and only charges me a few cents a minute.
“Hello, Sanji? This is Punjai. Can I borrow some sticks? I was making a dirt casserole for dinner and realized that I didn’t have any twigs to go with it. Ok. Thanks, I’ll be right over.”
I wonder how they charge their phones, if many people in India have no electricity.
Man, that infrastructure is gonna suck to build… might be cheaper to use COW’s (thats cell on wheels, not to be mistaken w/ cow’s with hooves)
There goes India’s bees.