Far from being considered a social obligation, offering telecom services in rural areas has now become the hot spot for private telecom operators, says a news report. In India, nearly 75 per cent of the mobile users in the villages are now owned by private operators as cellular phones catch the imagination of rural consumers. According to numbers released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, nearly 21 per cent of the mobile user base now resides in the villages of India, where a few years ago none of the operators wanted to venture. As on September 2007, out of the 209 million mobile users in the entire country, 43 million were in rural areas.
Indeed, rural mobile user base is more than the number of total fixed line telephone subscribers in the country, which has dwindled down to around 35 million, according to TRAI.
Market watchers also pointed out that with as many as five new operators planning a pan- Indian network, they will be banking on the unconnected villages to get them afoot into the market. The Government has set a target of 500 million telephone users by 2010, of which about 200 million is expected to come from the rural areas.