ALKHOBAR, 20 November 2007 — As more and more regions globally come under the “mobile umbrella,” rural parts of India are no different. Mobile penetration is increasing in this world’s fastest growing telecom market and the report “Emerging Rural Mobile Market in India” from Research and Markets provides extensive information on the marketplace for the mobile industry in rural India.

India’s telecommunication sector is witnessing an explosive growth, as falling tariffs and rising incomes are bringing mobile phones within the reach of millions of new customers. Mobile industry players are eyeing rural India as their new area of opportunity. The companies are getting a boost from the fact that the number of mobile users is expected to cross 230 million by December 2007 and 500 million by 2010, with the addition of about five to six million subscribers monthly.

Cellular service providers are finally entering India’s thus far ignored rural market, turning toward rural India to broaden their base and reach. Such a move is not without difficulties. The low population density in rural areas has necessitated more transmission towers of higher altitudes, raising costs. Language is another problem and there are many dialects that have no alphabet in rural India. To meet these challenges, operators must come up with solutions such as simplifying product access, offering customer centric solutions including songs, music, and ringtones, and participate in infrastructure sharing.

As of March 2007, mobile subscribers in rural India accounted for just 20 percent of the Indian mobile subscriber base. However, this is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of more than 47 percent during 2007 to 2010. Enormous opportunities are emerging for the low cost handset manufacturers. Rural India will account for around 35-38 percent of the total mobile handset sales by 2010.

With such a forecast in tight focus, ZTE Corporation (ZTE), a global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, has revealed that the company has delivered a record 10 million handsets in India. This makes India the second largest market for ZTE handsets, behind China.

ZTE’s diversified business strategy concentrating on integrating IP-based mobility and broadband has positioned the company as a leading handset manufacturer and supplier globally. In India, the company has also forged solid collaborations with several prominent telecom service providers including Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, Bharti Airtel, supplying them with terminals and handsets of various levels.

Hardware still provides major financial opportunities in rural India, but in urban India, ICT companies are now paying attention to service offerings. AOL has launched new local language versions of the AOL India portal, http://www.aol.in, and launched Truveo’s popular video search engine in India.

AOL.in is making available content channels in the Hindi and Tamil languages, improving the breadth of AOL’s offerings at a time when the online audience in India is skyrocketing. The number of Internet users in urban India has grown by 28 percent in the past year, and about 60 percent of all active online Indians, numbering about 30 million, prefer to read in local Indian languages. The Hindi and Tamil language portals will have language sections in News, Cinema and Astrology.

For Indian Internet users, the Truveo video search engine (www.truveo.com) will enable users to search and browse through tens of millions of videos from thousands of sources across the web. To better serve its users from around the world, the new Truveo Indian destination (http://in.truveo.com) will feature popular, high-quality videos of regional interest and allow users to search and discover videos in their native language.

Even in this Internet Age, not all information is acquired online. With that in mind, Harvard University has put forward the most ambitious expansion of research and education related to South Asia in the university’s history. The project entails a host of new programs related to South Asia and will be pursued with an unprecedented degree of collaboration and coordination across the entire university, including Harvard College and Harvard’s 10 academic units.

The initial objectives of Harvard’s approach to South Asia are to:

• Increase the number of professors whose focus includes research related to the region;

• Expand financial support and scholarships for students from South Asia accepted at Harvard;

• Accelerate research related to South Asia by Harvard scholars;

• Facilitate travel to and from South Asia for students and scholars from Harvard;

• Increase the number of researchers, scholars, and students from South Asia who come to study, teach, and learn at Harvard;

• Further partnerships with universities and other organizations in South Asia with whom Harvard may partner; and

• Strengthen the South Asian community on the Harvard campus.

Students from South Asia represent one of the largest groups who come to Harvard from outside of the United States; the numbers from India alone already exceed those from Germany, France, and Japan or the United Kingdom. Today, Harvard matriculates twice the number of students from South Asia, than it did in the early 1990s. More information on Harvard’s South Asia undertaking is available at the www.southasia.harvard.edu.