Buying a cellphone can be as complicated as buying a secondhand car. Like the secondhand car salesmen, the cellphone retailers offer a limited selection of models, which makes it difficult to believe their recommendations, especially when new devices are being introduced every week. Recently I needed to buy a new cellphone and I took the route that has elements of both, online and offline.
The practice is normal nowadays—select few models with e-tailers, test them in a regular store, go back online to make the final purchase.
The price that I paid to the e-tailer for the cellphone was about 10% less than the lowest price quoted by the brick-and-mortar shop that I had visited. The logic of lower prices is unbeatable: it is one of the main reasons behind the rising popularity of e-tailers. In 2013, India’s e-commerce market was worth $3 billion, it is likely to hit $50 billion by 2020.
The good response that the e-tailers are receiving clearly indicates that net-savvy Indians are ready to transact online. The level and quality of broadband penetration in the country is still abysmal, but once the penetration of high-speed broadband deepens, the sale of online travel, books, fashion products, cellphones, laptops, etc., by e-tailers will see a massive surge.
According to the new Telecom Subscription Data released by TRAI there were only 85.74 million broadband users in the country by the end of December, 2014. The TRAI report also reveals that 70% of the users are relying on their smartphones or dongles to access the Internet—the reason why 30% of the traffic in the e-commerce platforms is from mobile devices.
NOFN, which seeks to connect 250,000 gram panchayats through broadband optical fibre network, can be an important driver for e-commerce. Unfortunately, NOFN has been mired in delays since its inception in 2011. The project was supposed to be completed by 2013, but now the deadline has been shifted to December 2016. It is time for the government to invite private players – from telecom, internet, content and e-commerce sectors – to invest in NOFN and ensure that the project gets completed on time.
In this issue of the magazine, we are having a coverage of the 17th edition of the Express Technology Sabha. The Digital India programme, whose first pillar is broadband highways, was the topic of discussion in many sessions at the Sabha. There was overwhelming consensus at the Sabha that NOFN must be completed for realising the vision of Digital India.