Meanwhile companies are reporting a huge growth in the use of text messaging - 200 million messages were sent on the Orange network alone in March.

BBC: Children using mobile phones

There are around four million mobile subscribers in India, with between one to two million on the Orange network, which is known as Hutch outside of Mumbai.

BBC: news via text reaches India

And there is the small matter of his father, Li Ka-Shing, Hong Kong's richest tycoon and a force in telecoms thanks to his ownership of Hutchinson Whampoa, which last year made a fortune selling its stake in the Orange mobile network in Britain to Germany's Mannesmann.

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