iPhone Finally Offered on Contract in India

Reliance Communications Ltd., India’s third-largest telecom company by number of users, has said it will offer Apple Inc.’s iPhone 5S and 5C with a two-year contract, the first time that iPhones will be subsidized by a telecom operator in the country.

The contract system, which is widely prevalent in other parts of the world, is a rarity in India. Telecom operators in India don’t subsidize the handset for their subscribers as the lack of a universal data base–such as the U.S.’s social security number–makes it difficult to track users and determine their credit worthiness.

In fact, Reliance Communications’ own experiment with a contract system in 2003 was a big failure.