Smartphones and Networks in India

Normally people focus their smartphone use on media and entertainment. In India, network coverage is slowly developing, unlike US, UK, Japan, Korea etc. (the later two were the first to bring about 4G). So, without decent 3G speeds, (average speeds generally stay around the 5 mbps mark) the smartphone ecosystem becomes pretty useless. Downloading apps, using Facebook, Instagram and other data heavy apps lead to a retarded user experience. Not to mention the pathetic state of the Cloud in India thanks to the below average 3G speeds. Streaming music, video and using cloud storage services on a regular basis is also slow and expensive thanks to the absurd data pricing schemes. 

Talking about pricing schemes, major service providers in India want retarded development, so as to profit from this for as long as they can. They do not realize that people would pay a reasonable amount to get good speeds and therefore a good user experience. 

India can be a potential market for electronics and technology, but the greed and lack of insight of these service providers are part of the reason for the lack of development in this area.The fundamental justification for this would be due to the small customer base (most of which is the urban population) and there would be less profit if they were to provide cheap data rates. Contrary to that supposed image, smartphone prices have been plummeting and are more easily available at affordable rates, thereby creating more tech savvy users. 

Customers do get to have an user experience but just not that rich of a user experience, as was intended by mobile phone manufacturers, Android, iOS, and Windows. As long as service providers don't take the initiative to bring about this change, the user experience would remain in this pathetic state for quite a while. 

But recently, hope has been rekindled, albeit in the fibre optic section and not in the wireless 3G and 4G area. Service providers like ACT, YouBroadband, Tikona, Spectranet have taken the lead in providing reasonable speeds to users at cheap rates. Broadband from major service providers have ridiculous pricing schemes, the same tactic employed by the wireless sector. 

Phones like the Nextbit Robin, which is partially cloud based, would be pointless in India, unless the major providers do something about this. As mentioned before, the amount of affordable smartphones flooding the market is huge and the lack of fast and affordable data fragments the experience of these low end users. If Google Fiber came to India, the competitors would realize the net worth of providing a good user experience and this would lead to the adaptation of better affordable rates. 

Reliance has already climbed aboard this bandwagon and started providing attractive prices with Jio. My only hope is that the other service providers take notice of what is at stake here and act quickly.