3G: Does this change everything?

Much has been written about 3G auctions and the speculation whether India is ready for 3G or not. I am of the lobby which thinks 3G has been long due and we certainly need it now! To give you a perspective of current 3G adoption BSNL grown from 88,000 3G subscribers in Nov’09 to 1,000,000 in Mar’10, that’s like 11X growth in 6 months! So I think it’s safe to assume that the users are ready to adopt so we will put that issue aside in this post.

I definitely feel that 3G introduction (by private players as well) will change a lot of things around us and India will experience a huge inflow of gadgets like iPad, Kindle, 3G tablets etc. It will be interesting to see how things shape up as different sectors adopt 3G services.
I tried to capture some thoughts about few sectors:-

Display medium

3G will make the wireless devices as another medium of displaying content. The proliferation of SmartPhones already proves that. Some Reports suggest that by 2014, 15% of all handsets manufactured in India will be SmartPhones this is huge considering the 650 million user base of Indian mobile users. 3G will empower these SmartPhones with the capability to show high speed content. Growth of Smartphones + 3G will provide another medium for mobile content builders to grow and provide information more interactivity on mobile, compared to 2-3 hours of television exposure.
Moreover, demand for 3G devices like iPad and Kindle and other tablets may increase a lot. Amazon currently provides free 3G with Kindle in US and iPads are already used with BSNL sim-cards in India (you just have to chop off the plastic from the BSNL card to make it fit in the iPad 3G model). These devices are cheap as compared to laptops and they have the aesthetics to look cool. 3G will be like the fuel to these devices and I am sure we will see lots of different sectors using these. So don’t be surprised if you go to a restaurant and the server brings you 2 iPad-Menus with pictures ingredients, and recommendations of various dishes :) (that would be really cool..)

Mobile Marketing

Many studies suggest that m-marketing in India will grow four-fold in next 3 years. Admob ranks India at number 2 worldwide in terms of ad requests. This isn’t surprising as we already see m-marketing content increasingly delivered on our phones these days. I think 3G will further push this trend.
The change however might be the experience of these ads. 3G will enable advertisers to design more content rich media. So, companies may engage you in designing your next pair of shoes on your cell-phones and then place the order or share it with other friends etc. The app culture will also get more leverage from 3G. So you may have a restaurant app on your mobile phone and you will be able to see the restaurants nearby, their menus and the ambience etc. Infact Jasper Infotech among others is already working on such an app.
The overall point is that mobile marketing will definitely benefit from 3G and more importantly we may start to make some sense of these ad campaigns. With increasing pressure on ARPU level m-advertising on 3G will certainly benefit the telecom companies and in turn consumers.

Communication/Entertainment

Watching movies and videos online certainly is a pain right now. 3G will certainly improve that experience. A bulk of mobile VAS services are designed around entertainment these days and with 3G this trend will only grow. Multi-user games on 3G network may become a common phenomenon with 3G! A lot of us belong to the speed hungry impatient lot and 3G will be a relief to us.
Considering that YouTube sees 16 million India users every month now I can safely say that social network surfing will increase with proliferation of 3G. The bollywood will certainly react to it and we should see movies released specifically for web / mobile users. Among other things Video conferencing, virtual meetings, logistics/supply chains, m-banking etc may also see a lot of improvement with 3G.

Voting

Don’t shoot me for saying this but the weirdest use of 3G network + any wireless device could be voting. Imagine going into a polling booth with a touch enabled voting machine over 3G. You can see the candidates with pictures and political parties, click the picture to see the profile, education, criminal history etc with one touch and vote accordingly. 3G can make real time monitoring of candidates and parties in your neighbourhood easy and fast. Think about the fear in all those political parties’ heart with such an exposure.
Traditionally any telecom technology in India has seen intense price competition and as a result has been available at a very low cost to us, and I think 3G shouldn’t be an exception. I think 3G presents an awesome opportunity for almost all sectors to reach out to consumers in a bigger and better way. What we need is rich and innovative content and I think India Inc won’t disappoint! This may change the way we do everything today.
Don’t tell me you are not convinced! Would love to hear how you would use 3G services