CELL PHONE : A BLESSING

Can technology really help reduce the technical divide in a country like India? Well as far as my insight to the recent developments happening in this field as the cut throat competition and reduced fares I think this so called divide is reducing drastically. And the penetration of the cellular technology is the reason for such a growth! So I consider the cell phone to be a blessing for the betterment of the country and is one of the engines for economic growth. Plus good news from researchers is that cell phones do not cause brain cancer or promote carcinoma! So indeed a blessing!

The latest in cellular growth is the introduction of the 3G technology and the cheaper cost of owning a mobile phone with complete coverage in the rural areas will help in the reduction of this divide. Though the personal computers have not come under the sub-10k region and lack of access to internet are the major hurdles that are hurting the growth, but the silver lining is that the cell phones have reached near 1k mark due to which the cellular density has increased many fold, which helps the poor farmers and other people.

Due to the cut throat competition between service providers and other soaps the cellular density has overtaken the landlines in Oct 2004 and this comes within a period of a decade! Even USA or other developed countries are still to reach such a high growth rate! This has caused a wide spread use of cell phones in India, and due to this fishermen are able to bridge the supply and demand gap and lessen the wastage of highly perishable goods like fish. Now the sellers and buyers are in constant contact even before the fish reaches ashore!

Now with lots of news and other materials available on the cell phones and with access to the wap or gprs at further reduced rates will attract people to use the cell phone as their primary and emergency equipment connecting the world. And it would do wonders if the providers provide flash news in cases of emergencies and other calamities. With further improvements in the networks and rural connectivity there can be faster developments in the backward regions and this will improve the GDP of the country.

Growth in the telecom sector with extra stress on the rural economy and the research and development of newer, cheaper and faster models will help improve teledensity and the government should try to provide computers under 10k and cell phones under 1k mark as this focuses on the fuelling of the economy!