Reuters Market Light Expands To Punjab; Only 50,000 Subs

After a pilot in the state of Maharashtra, Thomson Reuters has expanded services to the state of Punjab. According to a company release, the service has signed up 50,000 users in Maharashtra, and they intend to expand to a third state by the end of the year. An interesting tidbit - they’re using post offices in Maharashtra to drive registrations.

Now with just 50,000 subscribers in Maharashtra, they’re falling short of the 250-300,000 subscribers that former EVP, Media (Asia) Azhar Rafee had outlined a few months ago in an interview: RML will have to add over 70,000 subscribers a month this year to achieve that goal. Perhaps Punjab, among the richest states in the country, and a largely agricultural state at that, should help them close in on that goal. Rafee had said then that Reuters also intended to make the service - covering 17 different crops - in multiple languages.

I do think that voice based, multilingual, services are a better bet than SMS - since in some states, lack of education is an issue. However, costs will be an issue, and pricing the voice services at Rs. 6 per minute will not work.

Related:
- Bharti Airtel To Focus On Livelihood, Education & Healthcare For Rural Outreach
- Reuters Market Light Now Available in Local Post Offices across Maharashtra

Telecom Roundup: 3G Auctioneer Selection; DOT, BSNL Rural Rollout

– The dates for the auctioneer selection process, for the agency that is going to handle the e-auction for 3G and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA Spectrup) have been revised. Details here (pdf). Hope this doesn’t delay the 3G auction.

– BSNL has brought within the “reach of broadband”, 30,500 villages, and installed Village Public Telephones in 54635 villages, using money from the USO (Universal Services Obligation) Fund that mobile consumers had been contributing to. 5000 villages are being provided telephony using satellite technology - Digital Satellite Phone Terminals, and some via the mobile network. Bear in mind that villages have been brought under the “reach of broadband”, and not necessarily been provided broadband services. The Common Services Centers (CSCs) which we’ve covered before is dependent on BSNL rolling out broadband services. Do recall that Aruna Sundararajan, CEO of the CSC project had announced that BSNL plans to provide broadband to 30,000 CSCs by June.

– Rural expansion: The government is preparing to launch the second phase of its rural mobile expansion, covering villages with a population of 500; around 2 lakh villages in all. Around 11000 towers will be installed in a year and a half. In Phase 1, BSNL has set up 102 of the 6175 towers it had bid for (using the USO Fund), GTL Infrastructure has set up 371 of 421, Hutchison Essar has set up 242 of 752, National Information Technologies has set up 16 of 384, Quipo Telecom has set up 84 of 88, while Reliance Communications has set up 245 of 472…no prizes for guessing who the laggards are.

Sahaj To Set Up 24780 Rural Broadband Enabled Kiosks In India

During the Union Budget speech a few months ago, the Finance Minister mentioned that the government had allocated Rs. 75 crores would be allocated towards the setting up of Common Service Centres (CSCs, broadband enabled kiosks), Rs. 450 crores for the setting up of SWANs (State-Wise Area Networks) and Rs. 275 crores towards setting up State Data Centres. In all, not just in this fiscal, 100,000 CSCs have been planned, as a part of the National E-Governance Plan (NeGP).

A CSC essentially is a kiosk in a rural district, which allows online bill payments, booking tickets, applying for jobs, searching for market information and selling of local produce. CSCs are going to be managed by a Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE), which serves as the nodal point for services and government schemes.

In its earnings release, BSE listed SREI Infrastructure Finance mentioned that its subsidiary SREI Sahaj e-Village (Sahaj) had won bids for CSCs in 6 states - 4937 in West Bengal, 5565 in Bihar, 2282 in Orissa, 2833 in Assam, 8118 in Uttar Pradesh and 1045 in Tamil Nadu - a total of 24780 kiosks. These will cover 150,000 villages, and a population of over 21 crore. Frankly, if that’s what the government has targeted, I think it’s insufficient - approximately 1 kiosk for every 8475 people. Bridging the digital divide, indeed. Sahaj will be investing Rs. 1000 crores on CSCs. Hughes Communications India has signed up with Sahaj to supply 17,000 VSAT connections. Sahaj will also set up kiosks in Bihar, in Uttar Pradesh, in Tamil Nadu and in Assam.

Other companies that are setting up CSCs include CMS Computers (4962 CSCs) and Zoom Developers (1314 CSCs) in Orissa, and RCom in West Bengal. As per this article in DataQuest, the progress of CSCs has been rather slow.

Related
– Bharti Airtel To Focus On Livelihood, Education & Healthcare For Rural Outreach
– Nokia To Target Rural India Market For Growth, With Microfinance Options, Services

Bharti Airtel To Focus On Livelihood, Education & Healthcare For Rural Outreach

Live from a FICCI organized seminar on Rural Connectivity in India

Sanjay Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer for Mobile Services at telecom operator Bharti Airtel said that company will focus on three key services for Rural India - enabling Livelihood, Education and Healthcare. Gupta called mobile connectivity in Rural India the next Harit Kranti (Green Revolution). Gupta shared several examples of a video study in Rural India about the issues some existing consumers face, of users who

• Have to go to another nearby village to even charge a mobile handset, and pay Rs. 20 to use a battery to recharge the phone — just because neither village as electricity.
• Feel uncomfortable talking to Airtels customer care executives - because they’re speaking in English, or just because the phone is being answered by a woman
• Have to travel 15km to recharge top-up their account (thanks Shefaly) a mobile handset because of distribution issues
• Find the IVRS menu confusing, and end up buying products by accidentally activating services that they did not need.

Another indication of issues with rural outreach was outlined by Prakash Ranjalkar, COO of GTL Infrastructure, who said that even to operate telecom towers, because of lack of rural electrification, they need to transfer diesel 30 km twice a day.

Sanjay Gupta outlined the following issues that need to be dealt with. The first challenge is to network rural markets. The challenge is not as much in the network, but in the infrastructure to connect villages. Also, mobiles are not like soaps - telecom companies need to adhere to Know Your Customer (KYC) norms for getting user information back to the company for registration and verification.

Airtel is investing in a hub-and-spoke model, so that wherever there is a matchbox being sold, the company will have a presence. They’re planning to cover 2 million outlets. The company has to:

• Make it simpler for people to use services - simplify the service plans
• Make it easy to recharge, using smaller denominations of Rs. 5 and Rs. 10
• Build relevance. Airtel has tied up with IFFCO (a fertilizeer company) to provide content that is relevant to the rural population. Gupta shared a call center call where the executive farmers with issues like market (mandi) prices, assistance with farming technique, weather forecasts, trouble-shooting farming issues. The solutions will be sent back via Voice SMS. The right alliances are important.

Gupta shared an audio clip of a voice SMS, offering a farmer a solution to deal with a problem of the yellowing of the leaves of a particular vegetable were yellowing.

Related: Lighting Up Rural India