Vodafone India is planning to expand its data services to every village with more than 5,000 residents.

The country’s second largest operator by subscribers has already covered 70 per cent of this target.

With data as an extra product added to its offerings, rural operations have become more viable for the operator.

Vodafone India’s data revenue grew 75 per cent in the past year and data usage grew even faster.

The operator expects some of this growth to spill to rural areas as well.

“Until now, the rural market was only about voice.

“Now, that data has started growing, it is not incorrect to say that task has become more challenging with data,” said Vivek Mathur, chief commercial officer.

The company aims to get more subscribers to use its data services. It believes the possible data subscribers’ pie is as high as 350 million.

“They want to use data but have not yet started to use mobile internet,” said Mathur.

In the past year, the sale of data trial packs more than doubled, indicating an increasing interest in data products among first-time users.

Handsets hurdle

Though a major part of subscribers who are looking to try the internet are the youth from metro areas, there are a lot of them from the semi-urban and rural areas, too, whom Vodafone is looking to catch.

Mathur also says while most of them go in for 2G data, as they try the internet for the first time, some directly start using 3G as well.

“The only impediment we see for the choice of 2G over 3G is the availability of a handset.

“The price difference between these products (2G and 3G handsets) is very significant,” he said.