Nearly 70 per cent of India’s population lives in rural areas and the tele-density in these areas is only about 3 per cent. This means that out of the over 70 crore people who live in our villages, only 2-3 crore have a phone. These are numbers that manufacturers and service providers across the telecom value chain are finding very exciting, for the simple reason that these figures reflect a large potential market. This market added over a million telephone connections in January-February alone this year. “The rural market is extremely important because of the huge volumes it offers,” says TV Ramachandran, director general of the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI). “If we are able to get the 50 per cent level of penetration that exists in urban areas, this market alone will mean 350 million users.” As the rural consumer clearly cannot be ignored, manufacturers and service providers are innovating models and products for this market. In the case of handsets, for instance, not only have low-cost simple phones been developed to increase cost efficiency, but manufacturers are also paying attention to the needs of small-town and rural consumers. Motorola, for instance, had a team of engineers live in villages to understand the villagers’ needs.Factors like high ambiance sounds, consumers who can’t read and power shortages are peculiar to these areas. To overcome these constraints, Motorola has developed a phone with a high speaker volume, longer battery life, voice prompts in languages like Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Punjabi, and an icon-based user interface. The company also observed that in these areas, a lot of people use their phones outdoors. To accommodate to this, the Motorola phone has a clear vision display, so that the user can see the screen even when the sun is falling on it. The antennas too give better coverage even in fringe areas, since connectivity is a problem.“We are seeing growth in villages and smaller cities and the challenge is to make products that are relevant to these people,” says Motorola Mobile Devices marketing director Lyold Mathias. Adds Nokia director (sales ) Sunil Dutt, “The entire philosophy of designing a phone starts from the consumer.” Nokia came with an anti-slip grip, when it got feedback that phones often slipped out of sweaty hands.Similarly, additions were made to phones keeping in mind the conditions in rural areas. Some Nokia phones have special keypads for dusty areas and voice messaging for those who can’t read. Bundling of handsets with connections is another concept being used to target this market. This brings down the total cost of ownership, important in areas where affordability is low.It’s not just handset manufacturers that are innovating for these markets. Cable and antenna manufacturers, like Andrew Telecommunications, too have developed repeaters and amplifiers that serve larger areas to enhance connectivity. “Site acquisition is a problem in these areas, so we have developed tri-band antennas that cater to multiple frequency bands. Also, these areas do not have multi-storied buildings; so we have lighter equipment whose weight can be taken even by a two-storey house,” says Ben Cardwell of Andrew Corporation.Even advertising has taken a different form in these areas. Idea has a programme where folk artists go to these areas and educate villagers by weaving stories of mobile phone usage into folklore. “A rural customer’s needs are different; he needs information about his phone as well as cost effective ways of using it,” says Pradeep Srivastava of Idea Cellular. “The model of setting up a network has to be different from the one in an urban area.”Operators have also introduced specific value-added services. A key need of farmers is access to market information and commodities prices, a service that is being provided by most operators. “Mobile advertising will also lead to better exposure in these areas,” adds Ramachandran. With operators bidding zero-subsidy and even negative subsidy for the Universal Service Obligation Fund set up to roll out network in rural areas, it is clear that operators are betting big on this market. “Once it is tapped with the USO fund by this year-end, we will probably have an additional 8-9 million customers every month,” says Ramachandran.
