Virgin makes splash in India

While we tend to focus on prepaid wireless news from the U.S. and Canada, there are plenty of developments around the world. Every day, lesser-developed countries are starting to acclimate themselves to mobile technology. One I’ve noticed lately is India. I see articles about their mobile landscape nearly every day, and they’re really picking up the pace. The latest development: Virgin Mobile will now serve a portion of the country.

This is through a partnership with Tata Teleservices. India has restrictions on which foreign telecommunications companies can enter the country, so the deal with Tata is vital to Virgin’s prosperity. They’ll now have the task of targeting roughly 400 million people aged 13 to 30.

The idea is that this demographic is being largely ignored by existing Indian telecoms. So they’ll be offered phones from Nokia, Samsung, and Huawei, ranging from $60 to $120. The plans look to be affordable: Text messaging will come in at under one U.S. cent per message. This is the same rate as weekend calling.

India adds 8.7 million subscribers per month, so there is astronomical room for growth. This is far different than Virgin’s dealings in the U.S. and Canada, where the target cell phone audience is relatively saturated. Here, you’re looking to pull people from other services. There, you can grab people who have never had a cell phone before.

One interesting tidbit from the article: Parents tend to take their kids’ phones away from them at night, so they can’t read and send text messages. After that, parents go through their kids’ phones and check messages. Virgin is offering to password protect these folders. So while the parents can still take the phones away, they won’t be able to read those private messages.

[Business Week]

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