Modelling the Growth of Mobile Telephony Services in India

Abstract

Quick deployments, competition, advancement in technologies and reduced cost of access have propelled the growth of mobile services in India. Predicting growth of subscriber base is critical for service providers so that they can plan their network investments accordingly. Accurate forecast of subscriber base will also help policy makers and regulators to formulate appropriate policies and guidelines for sustainable growth of mobile services. It is the objective of the study to forecast better the penetration of mobile services. We demonstrate the use of internal influence based logistic model and constant rate exponential model for predicting growth of mobile services. We indicate that though these models forecast with reasonable amount of accuracy the early stages of mobile service diffusion in the country as we are currently witnessing, comprehensive models which take into consideration various external factors that affect growth of the sector need to be developed.