Friday, April 9, 2010

Tech Savvy India

For a country with GDP per capita that 1/15 that of the United States, India is shockingly far ahead of the US in some aspects of technological progress; the prime example of this cell phone penetration (fun fact: the top PE investment in Indian history was Bharti Airtel Mobile). Words can't do justice to the ubiquity of mobile phone usage in India--so I'll try with some images:






Top 3 reasons why cellphones are more awesome in India than the US:

1) Incoming calls are free: Duh, this just makes sense. Why should two people be charged for the same minutes? You don't get charged for incoming lines on landlines, so why is it that cell phone carriers get away with this?

2) Relatively good reception: I often get better reception in rural India than I do in Midtown Manhattan. Enough said.

3) Cheap rates and no contract: No, this is not a AT&T Go phone ad (which is a piss poor excuse for a pre-paid phone btw). Most plans in India are prepaid and super cheap: 1 to 2 cents a minute for domestic and 10 to 15cents for international.

Quiz with top secret prize is back, be the first one to guess which one of the above images is not a 'real' one but rather a 'promotional'?

2 comments:

  1. Great blog, Sri! The third one seems like an advert. Am I right? Sarah

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haha, thanks Sarah, I'm getting a commission from the mobile operators in India. How have you been??

    ReplyDelete