The Indian Cellular Market is entering a boom period after years of quasi-stagnation. Gartner estimates that by 2005, cellular subscribers in the country will number 30.9 million, up form 6.4 million at the end of March 2002. By then, India will be the fastest growing cellular market in Asia Pacific (in 2000, it was the Philippines and China) with 36 percent growth over the previous year.

Mobile operators will provide an estimated 45 per cent of additional telephone connections during the year. Cellular susbcribers are expected to grow 80 per cent by the end of financial year 2003 to touch 1.15 crore, up from 64 lakh subscribers in fiscal 2002, according to an ICRA report on telecom industry.

This would mean that cellular telephones would account for 20.5 per cent of the total telephone connections in India compared to 14.4 per cent last year. However, the cellular density would still remain a low 1.1 per cent comapred to the fixed teledensity of 4.3 per cent. However, the report points out that, growth in cellular telephony could vastly exceed these projections, if the system of calling party pays is implemented.

Just for the record, new cellular connections comprised 34 per cent of all telephone connections last fiscal and 22 per cent during fiscal 2001.

Doing some more crystal ball gazing, the ICRA report points out that the cellular subscriber figure is expected to touch three crore by 2005. At the same time, the fixed line network is expected to expand to about six crore by 2005 from 3.84 crore lines by 2002.Revenue growth, however, will lag the growth in susbcriptions.

Such is the massive demand for SMS globally that the GSM Association's, a wireless and cell-phone organization envious forecast of 10 Billion messages a month by end 2000 was achieved during September - three months earlier than predicted. The Association has now revised its year-end forecast for December to 15 Billion messages per month. According to the GSM Association, text messages sent across the world hit a staggering 50 billion in Q1 this year. This represents an impressive rise. During the same period in 1999 there were only 3 billion text messages sent, Q1 2000 saw around 10 billion, and now there's five times that figure being sent across more than 500 million global GSM users.

In India also, Mumbaites are also sending more than 28 Lakh SMS messages per day. SMS reached its peak on New Year's day (2000) when cell phone users were flooded with New Year greetings. The AirTel network in New Delhi handles around 6 Lakh SMS messages on an average. Just before the arrival of the New Year, the network handled more than 74,000 calls between 11 p.m. (31 Dec 2000) and 1 a.m. (1 Jan 2001). Essar Cellphone claims that it handled more than 9 Lakh SMS messages on that day.

In Mumbai on New years day over 15 Lakh SMS Messages were sent between 10pm and 3am. On Valentines day 9 Lakh messages were sent. Over weekends, BPL and Orange witness traffic to the extent of eight Lakh messages daily, with the number peaking in the evening. Of an average traffics of 60 Lakh cellular calls a day, SMS accounts for 5 Lakh messages a day.

60,000 messages flow down the AirTel channel and another 65,000 gets processed through Spice Telecom. In short, it is rush hour for SMS traffic in Karnataka.

In Manipal, SMS is believed to be doing roaring business as some 80 per cent of cellular users in the town are students.

When AirTel launched SMS in April 2000, the initial average response was around 18,000 messages. Similarly, when Spice Telecom had carried out a study two months ago it was found that 37,000 SMS messages were received per day. The big jump has happened over the last couple of months. And emoticons - those symbols denoting emotions - have helped.

BPL Mobile which conducted a consumer research survey across its Kerala circle, found that 75 per cent of its total subscriber base used SMS as a frequent mode of communication. It was found that 35 per cent of the users were youngsters, and that 50 per cent of them used the facility for romance. BPL Mobile today clocks 7 lakh messages a day across all its circles.

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