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| With 30% of all ears ringing, J&K is new telecom hotspot | | |
AD Singh
Jammu, May 4: Gone are the days when the postman of the village used to be one of the most privileged people in the village who shared the sorrows and happiness of all in a village and the Village Public Telephones (VPT) enjoyed an unchallenged legacy for years.
The scenario in the city and towns was no different and just half a decade ago the fixed landline phones and the Public Calling Offices (PCO) had an uncontested realm in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. Though the history of telecommunication in Jammu and Kashmir dates back to the 1877 when Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir hired the services of Indian Telegraph Department to lay telegraph line between Srinagar and Gilgit. But the later developments in this sector in the State remained sluggish for almost a century to follow. But a small handy handset backed with comprehensive infrastructure and technology has revolutionized the telecommunication sector in the state in just almost half a decade.
Though the Mobile Phone technology was introduced in India in mid nineties but J&K remained neglected on the tele-map for almost a decade and the break through was the launch of Mobile Phone service in Jammu and Kashmir by BSNL in year 2003. The ‘C’ circle state of J&K today is the latest hotspot for all the players in the market with a total of six service providers already pumped in almost Rs. 1000 crores to establish the infrastructure in the State out of which the three new entrants Vodafone, Tata and Reliance recently launched their services in a short span of three months and further the Aditya Birla Group’s IDEA and another UAE based company are knocking the doors. Surprisingly in a short span of six years the figures of GSM and CDMA based mobile phone subscribers in the state are approaching to 3.5 million and this has swelled expansively in the last 4 months with almost a growth rate of 20% as the offers get more competitive and the call rates go cheaper.
As the teledensity in the state soars up to above 30% the lucrative market of J&K though has yet not demonstrated the symptoms of saturation but with the subsequent rise in the number of market player in this State, with total population of almost 1.2 crore, the competition is about to get tougher soon especially in the light of the fact that the DoT is about to launch the ‘Unique Subscriber Number’ facility with which a subscriber without having to change his number can change the service provider for his number and so the companies are gearing up to provide better network and customer services to secure a place in this highly competitive market.
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