Untapped gap..IN CONNECTING WITH RURAL INDIA

The 180 million people in India who are officially hungry were probably not that interested in the successful launch of the country's uncrewed moon mission Chandrayaan-1
More than 60% of Indians live in rural areas; and that is where most of the 200 million hungry people live. Though Mahatma Gandhi once said "the soul of India resides in rural India", its mobile subscribers definitely do not.
Untapped gap
The latest figures from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRIA) say mobile penetration in rural areas is less than 13%, compared with 73% in urban areas, a gap that threatens to hold back the development of India as a global superpower.
"2G networks helped spread voice and SMS across rural India and has transformed that society. 3G will do the same by accelerating the spread of high-speed broadband in rural India. 3G cards will mean such services as e-education, video, e-governance and telemedicine that were not reaching rural India because of lack of bandwidth will see hopes that 3G will address this imbalance
India surmised that a 1% higher mobile subscription rate would mean a £140 rise in GDP per capita.Furthermore, as mobile penetration in urban areas becomes saturated, operators have launched extensive marketing programmes to attract rural takeup.
And the market is booming. TRIA says India's operators added 10.35m new mobile accounts in November, taking the total to 336.1m. BUT "The forthcoming 3G launch will help to provide faster provision of broadband and customised data-centric applications to rural subscribers. However, the operators will start to roll out their 3G networks to high ARPU [average revenue per user] subscribers who reside in the urban areas,"
BUT therein lies the problem.. Successful 3G operators will concentrate on areas where there is already high mobile penetration. There are billions of pounds involved in setting up 3G structures in the most accessible of regions, let alone the countryside. And for villages without a regular electricity supply, mobile users are more concerned with longer battery life than power-sapping snazzy features.
For India's rural community - in spite of the government's efforts - it may be some time before they attain the same services as urban users. In fact, they may as well whistle at the moon