India: Growth will push mobile telephony to penetrate rural markets.

An article in Finantial Express says that rural mobile teledensity is expected to go up from around 13% currently to 36% by 2013. This network and connectivity could turn out to be a big opportunity to deliver development. Information asymmetry is one gap waiting to be filled. Farmers have shown willingness to pay for some timely and relevant information. This is being seen as a business opportunity.

The articles A two-year pilot project in Maharashtra has been able to demonstrate that there is a need for such services and the cheapest way to deliver them is the mobile network. A mobile phone-based information service has succeeded in delivering personalised agriculture information to farmers in 10,000 villages.

It concludes that the service can drive up rural mobile teledensity and higher density only will drive the market to provide more services to farmers.