Now that the launch is over, it’s worth thinking about why this launch mattered at all. India is a infrastructurally weak country: the only thing we really have is a set of railways that probably was the best thing the Brits gave to India. Roads, ports, sanitation and health services — we are light years behind on every metric of development. (No fair saying I-can-get-broadband-in-insert-posh-metro-residential-area-here, true development happens when the average Joe outside Dindigul can access it too). At least for telecom infrastructure, we now have a company that seems eager to champion the cause of the common man, and make money in the process. From an interview in the Business Standard

Cost is our prime driver. We had to keep a low cost base, but yet make money. We also require huge capacity. We cannot charge more than Rs 500 per month. At the same time, we also cannot afford a customer acquisition cost of Rs 1,500 a month like the GSM players.

National Long Distance charges are another sticking point — in a country where an average urban salary can be as low as 10,000 rupees (if you are reading this on the ‘Net in India, you’re one of the luckier ones, that figure doesn’t apply to you), a long distance call that costs Rs 6/minute (late hours) and Rs 24/minute (peak) will only discourage calls. Cheaper NLD (Rs 0.40/minute intra-network) will make distances a lot more bearable (insert huggy-feely telecom ad here). Indeed, if they pull it off, Reliance will have done more for national integration with this one stroke than a lot of Indian pols have done for decades.

We keep talking about India’s rapidly expanding service sector, and the ‘information economy’ made possible by IT. Well, IT as a success story definitely wouldn’t have happened without good telecom infrastructure, which is why it is no coincidence that inside a software major at Bangalore, Madras, Hyderabad, Pune or Noida, telecom infrastructure tends to be very good indeed. Well, it’s time those benefits percolated from the sheltered groves of STPI units to Indian business in general. That doesn’t only include big business, it also includes small business scattered across interior towns countrywide.

We will be empowering at least 2 million people with the option to get not only a mobile phone but also data connectivity on the mobile. They can watch films. They can actually get POP3 mail. … So your mobile becomes a small computer in your hand.

(It seems a lot of the phones they’ll sell will be J2ME enabled — I bet Sun is smiling.)

Of course, it’s early days yet (service demos start Jan 15, service starts Feb or March), but I am holding the breath — as far as I am concerned, anything that increases India’s infrastructural wealth deserves to be lauded.