What more can India's telecom sector do?

Telephony today has reached out to 90 per cent of the population and the next step would be to ensure that it reaches the next 10 per cent. Ashok Jhunjhunwala from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and founder of Tenet Telecom said while speaking at a plenary session on Wireless India at the EmTech 2010 conference at Bengaluru.

He further added that affordability and broadband will be the two major factors that will help tap the remaining market.

Speaking on broadband he said that wireless will not be able to compete with it and added that the government needs to look in terms of speed and focus on 4G in the next one year.

The question that now arises is, what more can telephony do? The next big thing in the offing is mobile banking and there is a need to take banks to the rural area. However he felt that the telephony's biggest impact would be on the country's farm sector. The impact, he said, will be large. Today, a farmer may need to communicate with an expert regarding his crop. A call centre could be set up for the farmers and in this way the rest of the market could be tapped.

He further added that voice technology is another aspect that would lead to more demand and adaptability of wireless in the country. This could in fact help break the barrier among the uneducated and illiterate masses of the country.

S Sadagopan of International Institute of Information Technology said that the mobile phone has seen a huge growth in the wireless space. Today we are adding 15 million mobile subscribers every month. The largest contributor to the GDP is telephony and we need to make mobile the primary platform and for this the mindset of the people has to change.

On mobile banking he said that they are trying to change a few things in this department. Today one cannot transfer money unless the account number of the person is known. However in the future we would like to see that money is transferred using the other persons mobile number. We are getting ready for this, he added.