Guest User

Seouled Out

Korea in the digital vanguard

by Shashank Tripathi, Korea

Subscribe to this blog

A digital lesson for everyone

Oct 9, 2007 23:23

With apologies to VeerChand, here's some weird news from India (through Economic Times, the FT of India): At a time when Internet usage is supposed to be on the rise, the number of Net connections in the country actually dropped in the second quarter, falling from 9.27 million to 9.22 million!

As you can imagine, more and more Indians are, indeed, online, but they're just not using landline connections. Instead, Indians are getting online via the mobile phone. Over a fifth of India's 200 million-plus mobile subscribers go online via their handsets!

Anyone who has tried the best residential lines in big metros such as Bombay where a 256kbps (yes, Kbps) connection is touted as "Superfast Broadband", will understand why this is so. This is also a reflection of the sorry state of India's big telcos. The largest service providers are two state-owned companies--BSNL and MTNL--both of whom are so overwhelmed by the load that their servers crash often. Accessing the Net on the mobile becomes more convenient.

Even college-going kids carry phones with GPRS costing upward of US$400. Mobile operators are constantly introducing VAS schemes as their entire focus is to increase the average revenue per user. India's ARPU is the lowest in the world. And India doesn't even have 3G yet, so speeds for mobile access, of course, can't compare with broadband over fixed lines (which they cannot do anyway, for real Internet uses, especially not on the devices in common use).

From what I know, the state-owned telcos that the Economic Times refers to are not the only offerings. In reality, private companies such as Airtel offer connectivity as well, as do many bundled cable offerings, but it is difficult to count their subscribers. The reach is sketchy, and assuming you are within the reach of one of these alternatives, the speed of actual access is miserable anyway. (Lesson: Private companies are not the solution to everything).

But there is a big lesson here, which I keep indirectly citing in my other articles on this blog: Each market in Asia Pacific, like Korea's, tends to have its own idiosyncrasies and a solid media plan or digital business strategy should account for these differences. As in Korea, where Naver and Daum enjoy an almost de facto presence on any marketing plan, in India, factoring in some mobile creativity seems to be inevitable.

« Prev

Report offensive

Talkback

There are currently no comments for this post.

About Shashank Tripathi

Shashank Tripathi, nicknamed Shanx, believes that a rocking hammock, a good book, and a tall glass of strawberry milkshake are the way to save the planet. But that does not fill all the hours in a day, so he cuts his teeth on digital advertising and media, spending a good part of his life expressing opinions as though they were going out of fashion, or drawing boxes that connect to each other with shiny black arrows. Occasionally, he has also been accused of poetry.

Locus: Based in Singapore, but a devout jetrosexual.
Focus: Media, Advertising, Ubicomp, All things Digital.
Other: LinkedIn, Facebook