Kanika Datta: Ringing in a transformation

SWOT

The first time I used a mobile phone was in 1992 in Singapore. It was still something of a novelty in this most sophisticated of cities, not least because it was reasonably expensive to use.

It cost 2 cents a second (or Singapore $1.20 a minute) to make a call in those days; so executives used this new communication technology sparingly, though the versatile utility of a mobile phone was not lost on anybody.

At the time, with the country only just emerging from decades of controls, mobile telephony seemed a world away for us in India.

Yet, just three years later, Kolkata played host to India's first mobile service, then a joint venture between the B K Modi group and Australia's Telstra.

The launch was accompanied by much excitement""Jyoti Basu, then West Bengal's chief minister, made the first official mobile call""and a lavish launch party at the Taj Bengal.

But there was a good deal of scepticism as well; at more than Rs 16 a minute, high rental fees and exorbitant handset prices, this was rapidly dismissed as a rich man's curio, unlikely to make a major impact on PLTs (People Like Them).

And certainly in the early years, mobile phone ownership was confined to the creamy layer""in Kolkata it was alternatively viewed as an object of awe or disparaged as a nouveau riche gadget.

In this instance, with ownership and airtime costs high, I was happy to count myself a member of the PLT or mobile phone have-not fraternity.

I acquired a connection in 2000 thanks only to a bulk deal offered to Business Standard and the fact that I began to feel seriously left out in a world in which even my vegetable vendor sported a mobile phone.

By then, with costs inching southwards, mobile usage was already spreading like a contagion, even as service providers complained of low realisations per consumer.

My trusted, hardy Nokia 5110, which I considered the apogee of tech-sophistication, was already relegated to the ante-diluvian bracket as phones with cameras, torches, tape-recording facilities, WAP and what-not started making an appearance.

Nevertheless, I used my mobile with trepidation, replacing it only when someone thought fit, to my abiding surprise, to steal it.

Ten years on, who would have thought that Airtel would be beaming commercials targeting the common man""the tea boy, the kirana shop assistant. What is more, that's not such an unbelievable situation, either.

True, mobile telephony is just one element of India's wider telecom revolution. But it has, in one stroke, unwittingly fostered a social revolution of sorts and become a showcase for economic liberalisation in India.

Despite all the controversies""from the infamous "crores-under-the-ministerial-bed" scandal to controversies over licence fees and revenue-sharing, CDMA technology and now spectrum allocation""growing competition has seen prices of both services and hand-sets tumble dramatically.

As a result, mobile phones have become a great leveller""everyone from the plumber to the CEO has one, the only differentiator being the sophistication of the model.

Despite all the spectacular policy and regulatory muddles that accompanied the roll-out of mobile telephony services, the government's basic thrust towards fostering more investment and competition in telecom services has not just altered lifestyles, it has bridged the communication gap with breathtaking rapidity.

The ease with which a consumer could acquire connections from a host of competing private service providers saw mobile phones subscriptions grow at a ringing pace.

After being subjected to DoT and MTNL's disinterested public sector monopoly for decades, Indians suddenly acquired the unfettered ability to make a phone-call""and they embraced it with jubilant, exuberant enthusiasm.

Just a decade ago, reporters on the telecom beat were writing gloomily about India's abysmal tele-density rates""then among the lowest in the world.

Since then, tele-density has risen more than seven-fold and the number of telephone subscribers has jumped more than 20 times. It is mobile telephony that dominates those numbers today, overtaking fixed-line subscribers and growing at 2 million connections per month.

Mobile phones have become so ubiquitous that it has spawned a culture all its own, from popular cinema to youth chic. In this one respect, India's population has become truly globalised.

Of course, all of this is yet to touch rural India in a major way, a point that has served to widen the rural-urban divide in recent years and there seems to be little initiative to bridge this gap.

Judging by the impact this one small component of telecom reforms has had on urban India, truly mass-based mobile telephony will transform the country in ways that can only be imagined.

The views expressed are personal.