99% of Indians have to buy phones at full price, the concept of career subsidies is unheard of (except one carrier 5-10 years ago that decided to rip people off, thus destroying the very concept in people's minds. [Yes Reliance, I am looking at you]). Again 75-80% consumers are on Prepaid SIMs. Not because they have bad credit (though many do), but because due to some twist of fate, prepaid was always cheaper. This is what I pay for my Mobile access (I don't make many calls): $4 every 3 months. This is a minimum recharge to keep my connection alive. It costs $0.02-$0.04 to talk anywhere in India, per minute. But my plan charges it per-second so if I talk for 6s (I reached safely, got to run, bye), I get charged $0.002. This was only possible, because a previous government, decided to throw open the sector to competition. I have 3 Major and 3 minor players who are ready to hand me a mobile connection. i.e 6 players in every region. Until a few years ago, they were slitting each other's throats for getting customers. We as a democracy, decided to throw out that government. Brought in a bunch of corrupt people (who promised us the moon) and those 6 players will soon turn to 2-3 players via mergers. The ONLY WAY the US can have better mobile telephony, is to increase competition. Simple. Nothing beats competition.

The analogy is like saying "Car sales the lowest in a decade. The end of cars is in sight." Yes sales will be low, but the PC will remain as a utility, like the Refrigerator. No longer the center of attention, but always needed and ubiquitous. All the phones/tablets etc. need the PC as an anchor. Sure everything is moving to the "cloud", but all it will take is for a few accounts to get hacked big time and people losing their contacts forever to realize the "cloud" is not a foolproof solution.

You nailed it! I am from India and was thinking the exact same thing. Now that the minister whose 'pet project' this scam was has moved onto another one, the new guy want's to shut it down. I am sure he will find some other less fancy money making scheme. Note: This is called a money making scheme, not laundering. (Laundering is when you use a business to make your illegitimate money as legitimate as possible.) (Sorry I haven't yet figured out how to up vote comments, or am I allowed to?)

Have you successfully tried restoring your acronis backup? I have been "almost" burned by my backup software (not acronis) not understanding such underlying low level changes (such as encryption). The software only complained when I tried restoring!!

I live in India too and agree with all the statements, but disagree with the one that says Broadband is cheap here. You need to qualify that it is cheap due to restrictive caps placed on it. I am sure the $5 plan would be for 1GB/month. $10 for 1MBPS, would be what 3-5GB. And that too this is only in certain small pockets.