VAS Set to Push Telecom sector towards growth

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As the telecom sector continues to expand its wings towards the unconnected areas of the country,  value-added services like mobile banking are likely to further drive the growth of India's booming telecom sector in the next phase, with the market for such offerings set to rise four-fold to Rs 482 billion ($9.64 billion) by 2015, says a new report.

There is no doubt that data is going to be the key driver for the Indian mobile market’s next level of growth in the years to come, says a study by consulting firm KPMG, commissioned by the Department of Telecommunications ( DoT) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

According to this report, mobile value added services ( MVAS) is expected to increase from Rs.122 billion in 2010 to Rs.482 billion by 2015, driven by the uptake of third generation (3G) services in urban as well as in rural areas.

As VAS takes center stage within the Indian telecom domain, some of the services that are expected to make a big impact on the Indian telecom market include mobile banking, mobile education, basic governance services, health information services, agriculture and entertainment.



The KPMG report also says that the Indian telecom industry will continue to add subscribers at a healthy rate, even though the number of users has already crossed 900 million in a country with a population of around 1.2 billion.

It is important to note that a large part of India's population base, primarily in rural areas, still does not have any access to communications infrastructure driven by telecommunications services and therefore it presents significant opportunities for growth in the coming years to come. And moving forward, it is innovation around VAS that is likely to play a vital role in terms of attracting the end user towards a service provider family.