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WILL EVERY INDIAN HAVE ACCESS TO A PHONE? A decade ago, only 13 in a 1,000 Indians had a telephone. Getting a phone connection was considered to be an achievement of sorts. It’s a tribute to our times that we are thinking about a phone for every Indian today. Will every Indian have access to a phone in ten years’ time? Yes, it is not only essential but also inevitable. Providing phone access to the entire population of India would be a vital step in making our country competitive. A phone for every Indian does not mean every Indian will have a phone, but that there will be universal access to a phone-a phone will be readily available at an affordable rate, to all who wish to use it. When more than a billion people get connected, everyone will be linked to the national economic bandwagon. Thanks to the mobile revolution, telephone penetration is moving up rapidly. Today, taking into account both mobile phones and landlines, India has more than 175 million lines. Though landline numbers are growing slowly, exponential mobile growth is compensating for that. The mobile subscriber base has crossed 130 million and we are adding over six million customers every month to become the fastest growing mobile market in the world. In future, telecom numbers in India will be driven by mobile growth. This rapid growth is being driven by afford ability. Indian tariffs are the lowest in the world. But given that about 25 per cent of a service operator’s revenue goes into the government kitty as taxes, a fine-tuning of these rates could help make the service more affordable. Prices of handsets, too, are going down rapidly. The price of entry-level sets has already fallen to the suh-$30 (Rs. 1,350) price band and is slated come down further. The industry is working towards shared access for people who cannot afford to own a handset. Geographical coverage is the biggest hurdle in a country of India’s size. Infrastructure sharing by service providers is going to be a big driver of penetration in future. This has already started in the big cities. When implemented in rural and semi-urban areas, this will help expand geographical coverage faster. Universal connectivity is an ambitious goal, particularly for a billion plus population with an average annual per capita income of $620 (Rs 27,900). But what makes me optimistic is the consistently [...]