万花筒2007-12-22:New Zealand Quake 占领印度农村手机市场（在线收听）

There are a few things that are really important to Manish Chhikaria, his crop, his fields, his mobile phone, when he runs out of fertilizer, or needs a spare part, a quick call to his father back home takes care of it.

It’s so much better than having a landline, he says, so he's disconnected his , most of his neighbors just use mobile phones too. 70% of the people in this small sleepy North Indian village have cell phones. 8 million people sign up for mobile phone connections in India each month making it the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world. Now much of that growth comes from here, from rural India, and this is where big Telecom firms want to be.

India’s largest mobile phone operator Bharti Airtel is targeting this market aggressively with a colorful marketing strategy. Its vans go from village to village, belting out Bollywood style music, announcing cricket scores, offering freebies, in between, they get people to sign up.

There are no bridges, in many parts of our country, roads may be absent, train connectivity may not be there, but mobile connectivity is there. So we are, actually, bridging that divide, and really bringing the urban and rural of India together

It’s not all for a noble cause of course. Airtel Calls are targeting villages, because that’s where the majority of India's more than 1 billion people live.

It’s not just that the rural India needs telecom facility; it’s also that the telecom companies need to get into rural areas to further increase their revenues. To capture this market, said Seth, companies must keep prices low; Airtels said its tariffs are less than 2 cents a minute.

Sure, mobile phones are pricy, said the head of the Chhikaria family, but it means his can stay in touch with his relatives in the city. Gone are the days of a letter a month, and that he tells us is priceless. Mallika Kapur, CNN,Haryana, India.