Word: wirelessed
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...atop what is probably the world's last great growth market. India has more than a billion citizens, and most missed the late-1990s surge in mobile phone adoption. That means there's a near- virgin market of a billion (albeit mostly impoverished) people still waiting to join the wireless world. Now they are starting to sign up. In the last 12 months, the number of cell-phone customers surged nearly 80% to around nine million; meanwhile in China, the globe's biggest market with almost 200 million users, growth slackened this year to about...
...however, remains to be seen. India's notoriously obstructionist regulatory policies are being reformed, allowing prices to slide and competition to increase. The market has drawn potent players in the form of cell-phone subsidiaries backed by foreign heavyweights such as Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa and AT&T Wireless. Other rivals are piling in: a government phone company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam, is expanding its mobile network. And in December, India's powerful Ambani family, which controls Reliance Industries, India's largest private sector company, is launching a discount national cellular service. Industry experts say the market is becoming...
...Perhaps the biggest threat will come in December, when the Ambani family's Reliance Infocomm will launch a mobile phone service nationwide aimed at customers who need to make calls only in a limited area, such as one city. Based on regulations that allow fixed-line providers to use wireless technology to extend their networks without laying cable, Reliance is expected to be able to undercut the fees charged by incumbents. "We are very proud that wherever Reliance enters, we have dropped prices," says company chairman Mukesh Ambani...
...course, the world's telecom-investment climate is considerably more frigid than it was just a few years ago. In 2000, when wireless mania was at its apex, everyone thought consumers were dying for high-speed networks and mobile phones that could stream video calls, download movie clips and access online game networks. Caught up in the high-tech hype, mobile carriers rushed into the future, spending a now seemingly absurd $89.5 billion on 3G licenses in Europe alone...
...daunting. As a new entrant without any legacy network to upgrade, 3 is hoping to leapfrog the competition and establish an important early foothold in the telecom standard for the future?a future in which slower rivals are stuck with outmoded networks, just when consumer demand for high-speed wireless data service starts to sizzle...