Mobile numbers could double as personal ID

Your mobile phone number could soon double as your personal identity number as well, if the global communication infrastructure technologies provider's Indian subsidiary Alcatel-Lucent India's president Vivek Mohan's vision is realised.

Speaking at the annual MIT seminar EmTech seminar in New Delhi, Mohan said, "We are working with the government of India so that mobile number can be used as ID number of a person." Alcatel-Lucent is a global provider of telecommunications solutions to service providers, enterprises and governments.

"It is significant since one's mobile number is unique and we already have around 500 million mobile customers in the country. It has the potential to touch the basis of human life, which is what an application should do," Mohan said at the seminar organised by media house CyberMedia.

"However, it is still at a conceptual stage," he clarified. According to him, the situation would change as telecom operators focus on new technologies and applications tailored to the specific needs of consumers.

"People in the hinterland are not used to laptops but they find it easier to use mobiles. We can use mobiles to impart education after the introduction of 3-G services. It is important to remember that technology can be an enabler and not just an end-to-end solution to the people."

Maintaining that the next wave of growth is likely to come from the rural India, as the urban markets are already saturated, Mohan said, "It is certainly not charity. It makes good business. It is the right time to develop such technologies and applications. India can actually become a hub for these applications."

Speaking on `Innovative applications for bottom of the pyramid customers', Mohan said, that "Voice was the first bottom-of-the-pyramid application and it is likely to dominate the revenue stream for some time."

His company is also running a prototype for the `teleport', tracks the speed of a vehicle on the road and helps crack down on excessive speeders. "Basically, we have put sensors on the sides of the roads, which track how fast you are driving. This is definitely cheaper than the systems we have in place today," said Mohan.

Alcatel-Lucent was created through the $36-billion merger of France's  Alcatel and US-based Lucent Technologies in 2006.

Its indian arm is the largest network equipmwnt supplier in India.> It is currently executiong along with its Indian partner ITI, orders for 5 million GSM lines for BSNL and 1 million GSM lines for MTNL, estimated at around $1 billion.

In addition it has undertaken projects for providing equipment for half a million ADSL lines for MTNL and over 2 million for BSNL. In addition it has contracts for submarine cables for VSNL, Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications. It is also supplying CDMA-based equipment and services for Reliance and Tata Tele, GSM-based services for BSNL and MTNL.