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Kochi, Dec. 4 With the introduction of the 3G spectrum, mobile connections in India are poised to touch 500 million by 2010. Addressing the Industry Summit on ‘3G: The Next Wave’ at Kochi, Mr Siddhartha Behura, Secretary in the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, said the 3G bid document has been finalised. Broad guidelines have already been issued and allotment of spectrum has been planned through simultaneous ascending e-auction process. There would also be a pre-bid conference between the industry and the Government.

The auction is planned to be held in January 2009 by the independent auctioneer, N.M. Rothschild, and the process of allotment of spectrum will be completed before February 2009, Mr Behura said. “Bulk of the growth in telephone connections comes from the mobile platform. But the objective is not just the numbers; telecom must be used as the tool to empower the citizens and bridge the digital divide,” he said. The industry summit was organised by Ericsson and Assocham.

India has become the second largest wireless market as well as the fastest growing market in the world. The total number of mobile telephone connections in the country has reached over 320 million by the end of October 2008. Today it adds 10 million new mobile subscribers every month.

The next focus area of the government would be in providing affordable broadband, especially to sub-urban and rural communities.

“This is not only expected to give a new burst of growth for the community, but on a larger plane would provide multiplier effects to the entire rural community. As the telecom connectivity and broadband connectivity becomes a reality, the rural communities are expected to become more integrated with the rapid growth processes taking place in the rest of the economy,” Mr Behura added.

There was a need to provide not only plain vanilla voice services to rural subscribers, but a greater urgency to extend services like e-medicine, e-education and e-governance. These are facilities which the urban subscribers take for granted but are quite critical to the rural population and can be provided through broadband kind of services.

Mr Sanjeev Aga, Managing Director of Idea Cellular Limited, said majority of the new mobile users are from the rural countryside. Majority of the new mobile users, that is more than 50 per cent are from rural India.

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