dear friend,
you observation about earning and spending capacities in India seems myopic. pardon me, if it hurts. Expecting the same spending capacity from all Indians is BUNK. If only White Collar job holders were to use mobile phones your argument might be correct. But all telecoms have entered this market knowing pretty well whom they are to cater to. If tariffs were such high as you mention, subscribers numbers wouldn't be as they are now.
your sentence ".....The difficulty in India is that because such a large percentage of the population is mobile at any given time that such capacity planning becomes difficult - ........." itself identifies the uniqueness of Indian conditions.
If it is "so difficult" to plan for capacity, such people/ companies should admit failure.
The fact to consider is constant load factor. these towers are constantly handling to their peak capacity & visitors to particular cell site at do get the signal but don't get their call handled. Cell towers capability of handling a certain number of receivers (handsets) at anytime is not a new discovery. It is a fact well known to companies. This is what needs to be addressed before crying for higher tariffs.
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Foreign companies might think they are successful in "profiting from the great Indian market", but I disagree. They could capture only fraction of Indian market by trying to replicate what they could do / observed in other so called developed or developing countries.
The problem is most of them intend to send back to their parent companies profits in dollar terms. This is the reason they find any amount of tariffs in rupee terms less. This is more so becoz of the ever weakening rupee. Weakening rupee is the real killer to these companies.
If companies find better price realization &
business prospects in china, they could as well go and do business there.. I am sure you would agree that companies are not fools to pay such huge amounts in thousands of crores for 3g and 4g bidding in INDIA. They did so, seeing huge potential in India.
INDIA is INDIA. If one has to do business in India they have to study & adapt to India, not try to duplicate china, japan, korea, USA or Russia etc....
In any case, with a little investment and common sense they will achieve "some amount of success" even with or without trying to implement text book case studies and those from other countries.
becoz market & numbers exists here, in INDIA !!
what is the problem if indians collectively get a better value for rupee atleast for telecom services. there is no need to compare prices with NZ whose market is miniscule, where costs have to be recovered from few & limited subscribers prices would definitely be on the higher side.