Everyone is happy that Indian Mobile revolution has triggered millions of subscribers. All well, there are a couple of high fives and plenty of back slapping. Indians seem to have finally arived on the world stage; there are omnious comparisons with China. What else?

This post is triggered by comments appearing in Indian Economy blog and a Financial Express story.

There is however a fatal flaw in assumptions. Has anyone cross checked or verified the numbers? The incremental growth in numbers is assumed to be static. The whole addition of the mobile subscribers is dynamic affair. Much like the addition of new subscribers or churn in the old ones.

Let’s see it this way. Absolute numbers mean nothing for the mobile telecom party. It’s hogwash and sadly people who report on these issues are ignoring this fact.

However, mobile telecom numbers shouldn’t be quantified in this manner; we need some alternative methodolgy. How do you account for the same person carrying different telephone connections; seasonal visitors et al. Statistics can be definitely misleading.

At the end of the day, it’s just the mobile congestion is getting worse with every passing day. That is a DEFINITE proof of growing numbers!

Intersting links while I stumbled on these blogs here:

Santosh makes a pertinent observation that VoIP should be brought in to play an increasing role in the mobile revolution.

However, I personally feel that it won’t happen. First, the existing service providers have cartelised and it would be very difficult to break through the existing entry barriers. Any new incumbent would have to scale up; it would ahve made sense in underserved areas but “lucrative cities” are a strict no no now.

I really wonder whether the telecom equipment behemoths would have VoIP equipment to retail to these operators. They are happy to pander their own technology and earn royalties. Since there is no competition in the real sense of the term, innovations aren’t welcome.

GSM at best can be scaled up to WAP, GPRS or the 3G services. All for “faster” downloads. Does that really translate in better customer experience? So far, GPRS et al haven’t shown that to be possible; I am deeply circumspect about 3G roll out. Plus, GSM is inefficient user of spectrum.

So, VoIP would be good in theory for mobile networks; as for offering it on landlines it remains to be seen whether the existing arrangements would work or not. Suppose a Skype like thingy comes up; BSNL would be very happy to block it. Given it’s opposition to sense and sensibility.

Another link from Mr Dawra’s post was from BBC which said that Internet penetration can be increased by using Railways since they own huge amounts of fibre.

The main virtue of the plan is its ability to reuse the existing cable system, avoiding the time and cost of laying a fresh cabling network.The electrified railway tracks contain communications and control cabling, which almost always has spare capacity. This can now be exploited for sending modern telecommunications services to outlying areas.

With Prof.Jhunjhunwala at the helm of affairs, this is a sound idea.

He designed the CoRDECT systems- which is, I believe, based on CDMA for wireless Internet. As far as I know, HFCL Connect is using this system to offer wireless Internet.

So, the ideas abound; more than the numbers we need some action on ground.