According to a report released by the IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India) and IMRB, derived from TRAI findings, there are only about 2 million users accessing the internet through their mobile phones and other mobile devices on an active basis, that is, at least once a month.
The report further states that there are close to 127 million mobile subscribers, effectively 27 per cent of the total subscriber base of 471 million, who have internet ready mobile phones. Of these 127 million subscribers, only 9.4 per cent (12 million) users have used the internet over their mobile phones ever in this year. This number further reduces to 2 million or 1.7 per cent when it comes to active users. These figures are based on TRAI’s findings as on September 2009.

Telecom Yatra spoke to a few industry professionals on what could be the drivers of mobile internet. Rajiv Hiranandani, co-founder and executive director of mobile marketing agency Mobile2win, feels that mobile operators should educate their customers about using mobile internet. Moreover, he feels better and affordable data plans will also increase its usage. Mobile internet penetration in tier II cities will also steer the growth as these areas ape urban India, adds Hiranandani.

Sujata Dev, managing director, Times Broadband, feels that good Bandwidth and connectivity will push mobile internet. She says that rich data is what users will be looking for on the internet. “The data download on mobile will buck up ARPUs (average revenue per user).” According to Dev, the major chunk of people using mobile internet are the ones on Blackberry and other high-end handsets. Considering the price consciousness in India, she thinks right pricing by the operators could boost mobile internet.

However, Krishna Durbha, head of VAS, Mobile Data and content at Reliance Communications, feels that the roadblock to mobile internet is not pricing but the difficult accessibility in phones. He explains that even if the operators introduce affordable data plans, the handset should be compatible enough for easy internet access. Durbha thinks that handset manufacturers should make the access of internet at one click on mobile. The GPRS settings are sometimes too complicated, which turns down the usage, he adds.
Telecom operators have already started introducing affordable data plans. For instance, Aircel introduced pocket internet cards for Rs 98. Tata DoCoMo has Gtalk and Facebook included on its internet enabled phones. MTS offered 15 GB free download on purchase of its MBlaze data connection as a part of inaugural offer in Mumbai.

Mobile 4 Mumbai, a group of mobile application developers, is helping Mumbaikers to get into the right bus with an application which provides BEST bus (Mumbai’s local bus transport) timings and routes on mobile, without the need for a mobile internet connection. The group has announced the availability of a beta version of this application.The BEST application can be downloaded for free and installed from the company’s website, www.m4mum.com. Once users have downloaded it on their computer, they can transfer it on their mobile phone through Bluetooth or a USB connection.
According to Mobile 4 Mumbai, more than 42 lakh people travel using the BEST buses everyday. This application is designed in a manner which can work on any Java-enabled phone which are available for as little as Rs 2500. Speaking to Telecom Yatra, Raxit Sheth, co-founder, Mobile 4 Mumbai says, “The key part is that the application is viral and can be transferred using Bluetooth, e-mail or infrared.”

The application would have been a lot easier if BEST could have provided the route numbers. However, Sheth claims that BEST (Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking) has not been very supportive for providing any information for this project.
Almost 70 per cent of routes have been covered up to now, says Sheth. Mobile 4 Mumbai has organised a ‘Get Famous’ contest. Through this it aims to get information of bus routes from local people and the top three contributors will get their name as credit on the application.
Commenting on the promotion, Sheth says, “We are already in an advanced stage of tie-ups with leading newspapers, TV channels, radio, web, blogger network and telcos.” He further states that the branding activity should begin after a month.
Sheth adds that the developer group also has plans of location-based advertising in next six months. Location-based advertising is a form of marketing and communication that uses the location-tracking technology in mobile networks to target consumers with specific advertising on their mobile devices.

To break the clutter in value added services (VAS), some telecom operators are developing innovative services to catch their customer and ultimately, lead to better ARPU (average revenue per user), which at Rs 200, is among the lowest in the world.
Vodafone, for instance, launched a Busy Message service, using which the subscribers can compose and record their own busy messages for callers. The company also gives them an option to choose from their existing list of busy messages, such as that they are watching a movie or that their phone battery is low. Similarly, Airtel has launched mobile comics through its internet portal Airtel Live. The comics portal provides subscribers access to more than 300 Indian and international comic characters via mobile internet.
More recently, Tata Indicom, the CDMA brand of Tata Teleservices, has launched an innovative prank service, called Fun Voices, through which users can change their voice pitch and use it as a caller ring back tone (CRBT) for their callers. CRBT is the tone, often a song or recorded message, that callers hear when they call a particular subscriber.
To use the Fun Voices feature, a Tata Indicom user needs to dial a particular and press any key from 1 to 9 to change the voice pitch and background sound. Fun Voices, which was launched in November, has already been subscribed by over 100,000 users, claims the operator. The charge for the service is Rs 3 per minute.

In an email response to Telecom Yatra, Lloyd Mathias, chief marketing officer, Tata Teleservices, explains what LED the company to launch this service, “Analysis of our VAS offerings showed that products and services which have a quirkiness and eccentricity to them have a good offtake. Pranks (jokes etc) as a service were very well received. In fact, our audience even in ring back tones, consumes about 5 per cent of the overall prank content. This led us to create this differentiated product.”
As per Mathias, the company aims to appeal to users’ mindsets rather than their age and socio-economic segments. He says, “Youth and impulse driven mindset is how we would qualify our audience definition for this product.”
Elaborating on the promotional plans for the service, Mathias says, “We have currently done targeted activities towards our existing base using captive media such as bill inserts, SMS and Interactive Voice Recorded (IVR) messages. We are looking at creating a fan following using mass media vehicles such as radio, outdoor, on-ground activation as well as our extensive Tata Indicom exclusive stores. We are also planning some activity on the popular social networking sites.”