A new revolution is sweeping Asia...
It's not the kind you're used to seeing from certain parts of this region - there's no madmen running round with AK-47s... nor is any army calmly removing an elected government from power.
This is a different kind of revolution: Mobile phones. And it's an industry that is single-handedly changing the way millions of Asians live their everyday lives.
It happened to Britain in the late nineties... China a few years later... and now India has become one of the fastest mobile phone markets in the world.
And it's opening some fantastic opportunities for forward thinking investors.
Customers, Customers - Everywhere!
Right now, mobile phones are all the rage in China - and India is fast catching on.
Back in April, Chinese telecom giant China Mobile stunned the world when it announced over 301 million people got themselves a mobile phone - that's more people on its network than the 300 million people in the US.
It's a striking image - equivalent to every man, woman and child in the USA carrying a cellular phone
Most importantly, it shows the sheer size of the Chinese market...
It's a customer-base that'll keep the tills ringing for a few brilliantly positioned companies.
And it's a customer-base that'll only get bigger...
India's catching up...
For long, India has only knocked the doors. But as the Times of India put it on Tuesday: "It just served notice."
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India reported 8.06 million Indians got themselves a mobile - in July alone!
By any yardstick, this is the most number of subscribers India has ever added in a single month - for that matter, any country has ever added in a single month. It's more than the entire population of Sweden and twice the population of Singapore.
It's a far cry from when the story of Indian telecommunications began...
The fastest growing mobile phone market
In 1853 a 33km long experimental telegraph line was erected linking Calcutta, then the capital of Imperial India, with Diamond Harbour, the anchorage of the East India Company.
Telephone services began for real in 1882 when small exchanges were opened in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, and gradually extended to other areas.
Still, by the time of independence in 1947, India had a very basic telecommunication system made up of about of 100,000 lines. Since then, the telecommunications sector has seen phenomenal growth.
Reuters recently reported that India is "the world's fastest-growing cellular market."
And no wonder... mobile tariffs in India are the lowest in the world.
Despite this, only 20% of the 1.1 billion-strong population has a mobile, putting them well down the world league and long way behind China where the figure is 60%.
In the grand scheme of things it means India has 233 million people with access to phones - both cellular and fixed. So they're not quite in China's league yet, but the upside is obvious...
A hotbed of potential profits
You just have to look at the number of new mobile phone users in 2006 was almost TWICE that of 2005 and about THREE times that of 2004. That's an increase of almost 100% in two years.
What does all this mean?
Over the next couple of years, Indian telecom companies have a huge upside on their hands. But it's more than that - it's an invitation to every telecom company worth its salt to want a piece of the action in India.
Unlike China, where entry into the telecom business is regulated and the market is dominated by one player, in India it's a free-for-all.
Regards
Tom Bulford
for The Penny Sleuth
