Mobile Phones In India : 15 Years of Presence

I remember when for first time i saw mobile phone. I had come down from my college to home town on vacation and had gone out with one of my friend to tea stall. A young man in his late twenties was having tea when I heard a ringing sound. He picked an instrument which looked like walky talky and started talking. My friend told me that it was not walky talky but mobile phone.

It was 1996 and mobiles had entered India just six months back. Yesterday on 30th july 2010 , mobile phones completely 15 years in India. Today 635 million people in India have mobile phones!!!!!!!.

During 1995-96 , India was seeing many things for first time. Indian economy had opened up and many multinational were entering the scene with many different products. One of first companies to enter the mobile market was cell force which later became hutch and then was taken over by vodafone.

The handset of those days were large and similar to walky talky. Call rates were high (close to 20 Rs). Now that was high considering 15 years back one could have got one liter petrol for the prise , it could make single call using mobile phone.

Incoming too was at cost which was approximately , half of outgoing calls.Soon mobile became status symbol with who's who carrying the large instrument along with them where ever they went.

As mobile's journey continued , more and more companies started venturing into it and TRIA (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) made life easy for consumers by allowing more private companies to enter the scenario.

Today cost of calls has reduced from 20 odd Rs to under 1 Rs which means less than 0.25 cents of american currency. Incoming calls are free , while many service providers have come up with schemes of 1 paisa per second. All service providers have life time schemes in which one gets zero rental plans if fixed amount is paid in advance.

Another thing which has evolved in the years is handset. From being large walky-talky types , the instruments have become more smaller with more facilities which varies from type of games , torch , blue tooth , fm radio , excel sheets and ofcourse cameras.

The customer based of phone too have increased and everyone who does anything or even nothing has at least one mobile phone with it. He/she may be student or laborer or marketing personnel or business owner . A villager or urban deweller , a tea stall owner or delivery boy or multi million dollar business owner , one thing which seems common is mobile phone.Mobile phone has become integral part of lives of more than half of India.

India telecommunications industry is fastest growing in the world and India has second largest wireless connections in the world after china. By 2013 India is expected to have mobile connections more than 1 billion.The industry would reach to size of $73.47 billion and generate employment of 10 million (direct and indirect).

But while there are lots of advantage of mobile phones ,there are disadvantages too. Many parents  give mobiles to their offsprings to be in touch and in this age of mms , it is likely that children at age of 10-12 would get exposed to things for which they are not mentally ready.

Another common complains we hear regarding mobile phones are from housewives who feel their husbands are being with phones more than with them at home.

Parents too often complain about their kins being busy smsing or talking on phone till late night. For love birds , smsing till late night is really one of best things they do but for parents it can be really matter of concerns at times.

I wonder how things would be after 15 years. May be as soon as child would be born , someone would gift mobile phone for the child!!!!!!!

As 15 years have passed since mobile came to India , when I look in these 15 years , India has changed drastically in all these years. It is not same how we dress, how we think , what we do and how we talk. Times change faster than we think it does and technology changes way we do things.