The total mobile penetration may have reached 14 per cent of India’s population. However, industry experts assert 13 per cent of this is in urban centres and only one per cent in villages.

The opportunity is not lost on market players like Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and Reliance Communications who have been present in this segment for a while.

Now Hutchison Telecom, Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices too have descended on the turf with big network expansion plans and innovative marketing strategies specially tailored for these regions.

“The B and C category census towns are raking in good business for us. Currently, almost 35 per cent of our business comes from these circles. However, the potential here is immense as only a per cent of the total population actually use mobile phones,” says a spokesperson for Tata Teleservices.

TTS, operating in 20 of the existing 23 mobile telephony circles in India, is using a door-to-door marketing strategy, involving members of gram panchayats and trained market-feelers to make residents of villages and small towns aware of the usefulness of mobile telephony and how the system of pre-paid refills work.

According to the company spokesperson, value-for-money handsets priced between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,400 with a plethora of tariff plans to choose from is what is driving subscription growth in these regions.

Sanjay Kapoor, joint president, mobility, Bharti Airtel, agrees with the trend and says his company had enjoyed a growth of 166 per cent in June of 2005-06 in circle C towns, as compared to a growth of 65 per cent in metros.

“We are concentrating on improving network connectivity in the rural areas along with existing circles we and are spending $1.5 billion this year for that purpose only,” says Kapoor. Airtel is appointing distributors at the tehsil level and using existing channels of fast moving consumer goods in these areas to push their products.

Categories: Delhi Mobile Stores, Mobile revolution
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