JOIN USSistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL), which operates under the MTS brand in India, on Friday said it plans to enter into the growing and lucrative Wi-Fi and storage business next year.
MTS Chief Commercial Officer Leonid Musatov said, “We are finding opportunity in Wi-Fi and storage business.
We are undertaking pilot studies and getting lots of queries on that front.”
He said that both verticals are capital intensive business.
“There is a mentality in India that Wi-Fi is free. If the state government is ready to come up with supports we are ready to start it immediately. We can develop a revenue stream on that if it is systematically done,” he said.
According to experts, Wi-fi or a local area wireless technology could be a fourth generation (4G) connection for digitizing rural India.
Internet users are expected to go up 200 million, of which around 100 million will have access the Internet through their mobile devices, according to research firm Greyhound.
”India will have 330-370 million internet users by 2015 and the business opportunities are immense,” says Greyhound analyst Sanchit Vir Gogia.
According to IDG Ventures, cloud investments have increased by 19 per cent, with enterprises spending on average $3.3 million a year compared to SMBs spending $400,000.
MTS is registering its fastest growth in the data business, Musatov said.
“Internet penetration is yet to pick up in India. Our data business is registering 18 per cent growth in the last two quarters. We are expecting the same by the end of this fiscal,” he said.
“In the data business we are focusing on individual consumer products, mainly data cards. Non-voice services presently contributes 35 per cent of our revenues and the rest comes in from voice service,” he said.
Even though the gaming fraternity is growing in India, servers for gaming have not been installed in India as of now.
“Since we see business opportunities in the growing enthusiasm for gaming, we need to look into the issue of high data traffic in the country. This has prompted us to set up servers in India,” he said.