It is no surprise that India has a booming communication infrastructure when it comes to mobile phones. The early problems of under-capacity all seem to have vanished and thousands jump on the mobile bandwagon everyday.
However, the exact opposite happens with physical infrastructure, especially intra city transportation. Traffic in most cities is nightmarish and it has only gotten worse every year. Every once in a while, a grandiose foolish scheme like the Bandra Worli Sea Link come to fruition but its more to inflate the politicians ego than to solve the problem for the long term.
Sarah Lacy in an article on TechCrunch.com makes a compelling case for the entrepreneurial spirit in the mobile sector, with Bangalore as a case-study.
I completely agree with her reading of the lack of physical infrastructure having something to do with the fact that the government is in charge.
Entrepreneurs: Start. This. Company. Now.
By Sarah Lacy / Washington Post / TechCrunch.com
Thursday, November 19, 2009 1:29 AM
BANGALORE, INDIA ¿ It?s almost as if Russian cell phone carrier MTS has bought the naming rights to Bangalore. I half expected my immigration stamp to read ?BANGALORE! ? BROUGHT TO YOU BY MTS.? The carrier recently launched service in the uber-competitive Indian telecom market and has erected billboards every twenty feet or so. I have never seen so much advertising by one company in one space. They all sport an agro looking dude with his face twisted in some rebel-yell while he does inscrutable things with robots and mechanical arms holding different tech gadgets.