Mobile phone numbers in India
Cellular Operators Association of India had last week made an announcement that there are 500 million mobile numbers in India making it the second largest group of users in the world after China. This translates to a teledensity of 45 % overall with 97 % teledensity in urban areas and 18 % in rural areas.
This statistics (as often is the case with agglomerate numbers) is incredulous. Some might infer that the number of people in middle income group have gone up.
Such statistics hide more than what it reveals. It is most likely that this count of mobile numbers take into account SIM cards which have been issued over period of time but not those which have been disconnected. There was a racket in 2001/2004 period when mobile companies were trying to attract investors from abroad. One of the heavy weight measures to determine the value of a mobile company was the number of mobile connections and there was a concerted effort to increase the mobile connections by providing higher incentives to mobile retailers making them buy number of connections in the names of various individuals thus driving up the number connections dramatically before discussions with foreign investors.
Mobile users do not surrender the numbers even if they are not using their SIM cards for a long period of time.
The mobile number statistics do not jell with ground realities and poor income distribution. One look around public space shows that most of the mobiles are hand me downs with very little capacity to pay for mobile usage.
God save those companies which are going to use mobile density as surrogate for market for their products and go on a marketing spree
This statistics (as often is the case with agglomerate numbers) is incredulous. Some might infer that the number of people in middle income group have gone up.
Such statistics hide more than what it reveals. It is most likely that this count of mobile numbers take into account SIM cards which have been issued over period of time but not those which have been disconnected. There was a racket in 2001/2004 period when mobile companies were trying to attract investors from abroad. One of the heavy weight measures to determine the value of a mobile company was the number of mobile connections and there was a concerted effort to increase the mobile connections by providing higher incentives to mobile retailers making them buy number of connections in the names of various individuals thus driving up the number connections dramatically before discussions with foreign investors.
Mobile users do not surrender the numbers even if they are not using their SIM cards for a long period of time.
The mobile number statistics do not jell with ground realities and poor income distribution. One look around public space shows that most of the mobiles are hand me downs with very little capacity to pay for mobile usage.
God save those companies which are going to use mobile density as surrogate for market for their products and go on a marketing spree
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