In Part-II Sridhar T.Pai of Tonse Telecom talks about the cell phone revolution in India. In 2005 cell phone service providers raked in $22 billion in revenue, or 1% of India's GDP. For the current year, a total investment of $10 billion has been allocated by local cell phone companies for network-based expansion.

Will cell phones be the primary access device to the Internet? Is the mobile the PC in India? Can we Google on mobile? Will Internet access in India be via the the mobile (Bill Gates's proposal) or the $100 PC (Prof. Nicholas Negroponte's solution)?

Will India be the place where GSM and CDMA the two competing cell phone technologies play out? How is the Indian market different?

How are people in India going to access and use the Internet? Sridhar points out that this is a difficult question to answer given the dynamic and unique way in which Indians are using their cell phones. Will it be text-based or entertainment based?

A new and unexpected revenue stream opened up for Indian mobile operators in the entertainment space. For instance, the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire logged in one billion SMS and dial-ins.

Value-added services like games and ring-tones have also contributed to the revenue stream of cell phone operators.

In the next few years a potential and exciting application of cell phone might be mCommerce (mobile commerce) points out Sridhar. The Reserve Bank of India, India's central bank, has already introduced rules and regulations for mCommerce.

The next big revolution is in retail says Sridhar and mCommerce might accelerate and facilitate this retail boom.

Sridhar is the founder/CEO, Tonse Telecom, a research analysis and consulting company based in Bangalore. He has a BS (Telecom) from University of Mysore and an MBA from University of Oklahoma. He has spent the last 13 years working in various Telecom companies including IntelliNet Technologies, Xybridge Technologies Inc (later acquired by Zhone Technologies), and others. He started Tonse Telecom in September 2005.

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