Not Yet A Wireless Internet Revolution
By Nikhil Pahwa - Mon 29 Oct 2007 05:40 PM PST
A report here, at Businessweek - titled A Wireless Revolution in India, about the fact that the number of Indian users accessing the Internet via the mobile has doubled to 38 million, quoting the TRAI as a source. How much of that access is really open access to the Internet, and not to operator walled gardens like “Airtel Live” and “Reliance Mobile World”? From what I gather - a majority. All-access GPRS users in the country are pegged at between 7-9 million, and even that fell a couple of months ago after an operator repaired a hack that allowed users to access the Internet via GPRS for free. Having GPRS compatible handsets doesn’t mean that it will be used - so all those expecting a gold-rush in mobile Internet in India...hold your horses. SMS is still big. The story appears to be a follow up on another fisk-worthy story earlier at Businessweek about why number of Internet (dialup) subscribers are falling - something we’d reported as well. Same “mobile Internet” logic there. However, I remain more bullish on wireless Internet than wireline because of serious service quality issues.
