India is new mobile Eldorado

The Indian market is already recognized as one of the fastest growing mobile market in the world, with India adding some 6m new subscribers per month. To fuel to the current heath, the Indian Government has allowed operators with a license for one technology to deploy also mobile services in another technology. A CDMA operator is allowed to offer GSM services and vice versa. The result is a flow of announcements by Indian operators that they will provide national coverage in both technologies. BSNL (already known for a huge effort on GSM national coverage with a $2.5bn expansion plan to lay some 40m new lines), is planning a national CDMA services offering. In addition, BSNL is also planning laying 2m WiMAX lines for boosting broadband access. Reliance Comms, mainly a CDMA player, announced a $1.3bn plan for rolling out GSM-based mobile services. The immediate target is to reach 300m more people by the end of the year. Other operators will follow. This could be translated into a multi-billion dollars addition to an already healthy market. It is also a way to send price per line down, giving the huge scale of economy.