Cellphone net access 14 times more than broadband

Falling prices of handsets, reasonable connectivity prices and the convenience of an easy-to-carry mobile device are helping more than double the use of internet access over cellphones over last year.

Consider these numbers. The latest figures from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) reveal that 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).

Broadband subscribers figures, on the other hand, as on October 30, 2007, were a mere 2.69 million. And there are 22 million PCs in the country, with just 30 to 40 per cent 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-digit growth in users accessing the internet via mobile.

Take, for instance, the case of Bharti-Airtel. With a subscriber base of 50.91 million (as in October 2007), about 35 per cent of the user base can access the internet through their handsets.

"In any quarter, 10 per cent of this user base accesses the internet through mobile handsets," said a company spokesperson.

The company said the actual user base has been doubling over the last two to three years. In the last 12 months alone, it has seen 70 per cent growth in this user base.

Reliance Communications (RCom) claimed that since July 2007, 10 million unique users have been visiting Reliance Mobile World every month to try out some new application or content.

Krishna Durbha, head business and marketing, application solutions and content, RCOM, said: "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 per cent across the industry."

Analyst firms agree that India has one of the fastest-growing mobile markets, they also believe that the next stage of growth will be use of data on handsets.

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.

Said Mukul Khanna, VP (marketing) Spice Telecom: "Increasingly, data usage is becoming a larger pie in value-added services. The growth rate of data will be between 50 and 60 per cent, more than the traditional content in the next few years."

Spice Telecom recently launched Spice TV for its subscribers. This allows subscribers to watch live cricket matches on their handsets (it is the official telecom partner of the Indian Cricket League). Subscribers can also watch channels like NDTV, Times Now, Zoom, Cartoon network among others.

"About 10 to 15 per cent of Spice users browse the net through their handsets. We are expecting 25 to 30 per cent of these users will browse through these services in the first three months," Khanna added.

Choices are still restricted to checking emails, search, downloading ringtones, wallpapers and images, games, e-ticketing and instant messaging. Operators feel that once the speed limit increases users will be able to download longer videos as well.

However, there are a few hurdles in the mass adoption of mobile handsets for feature-rich applications through the Internet. One of them is mobile internet browsers.

At present, loading a browser takes more than 100 kb of bandwidth. However, the uptake among the users will propel operators to solve this problem as well, analysts believe.

MOVING UP THE VALUE CHAIN

Internet access through mobiles is 38 mn; was 16 mn last year

Only 2.7 mn broadband users

Only 22 mn PCs in the country, with 30-40% using the internet

Both GSM, CDMA users registered double-digit growth