Mobile Phones for the Dev. World

Mobile phones hold the potential to empower local communities in the developing world, lowering the entrance barrier and providing innovative services, especially when linked to the web. Indigi-Net uses the mobile phone network to its advantage, realizing two important points. The first acknowledges the fact that most tourists nowadays travel with their mobile phones. More than 80% of the world’s population is covered by the GSM cellular networks. It is an effective method of communications, even when visiting a foreign country, since roaming services are becoming cheaper worldwide. The second point emphasizes the fact that mobile phones support ad-hoc, grassroots local participation. In this case, when an SMS service is linked with a web application, participation does not require the user to have a computer. This way, one can obtain some of the many benefits of browsing the web, for instance posting and accessing data.

This is a picture I took in Lhasa, Tibet, two years ago. An older Tibetan woman holding a prayer wheel, while a young Chinese lady talks on her mobile phone. It is a common sight, and most probably did not even occur to me as anything out of the ordinary when there. It is remarkable to see the pace at which cities such as Lhasa are developing. To stand on one of the balconies of the Dalai Lama’s Potala Palace, send out an SMS home and receive a reply within minutes.

Following is some basic research I conducted on mobile phone usage in the developing world:
There are currently 3.5 billion mobile phones worldwide (source: mobile activism website). In Africa alone, there is an excess of 60% growth over the past year. In many cases mobile telephony has become people’s only means of telecommunication. China Mobile, the worlds largest mobile network, has been adding subscribers at a rate of almost 5 million users a month this past year. (source) It is estimated that by the year 2015, mobile communications will deliver affordable voice, data and Internet services to more than 5 billion people. (source: gsmworld)
In many countries mobile phones are the easiest and least expensive way to get a phone line. They are far more pervasive in developing countries, when compared to the Internet. The growing infrastructure in even highly remote and rural locations makes the mobile phone network an accessible means of communication in the developing world, especially as prices of hardware and services continue to drop. In addition, there is a relatively low learning curve when using a phone, making it far more accessible than computers to a wider range of possible users. Prepaid services enable those who lack the funding or credit for monetary deposits to also own a phone. When using prepaid cards, one pays for a bulk of airtime, and does not need to pay for any monthly fee or deposit. 4.58 million of China Mobile’s new customers in February were prepaid subscribers and only 328,000 were contract customers. (source) Prepaid considerably lowers the entrance barrier and raises the potential participation level, especially for the developing world. Mobile phones are not as restrained by illiteracy as one would think. It is a much more substantial barrier for computer usage. Therefore, mobile phones provides millions new opportunities to exchange information and engage in entrepreneurial activities.
Renting out mobile phones is a common solution in many poor regions, where people can’t afford to own a private phone. An article on Forbes describes Sukhriya Hassani’s work for a cell company called Roshan in Afghanistan, rention out cellular phone service by the call minute. Roshan has spread across 175 cities and villages and provides mobile phone service to 1.2 million customers – half the Afghan market. This model works for many of the African nations. Grameen phone in Bangladesh provides similar services for its rural and poor communities.

In India, what is truly wonderful about what is recognized as the “mobile miracle”, is that it has accomplished something India’s old socialist policies talked about but did little to achieve: It has empowered the less fortunate. Beneficiaries of mobile phones are not just the affluent, but those who in the old days would not even have dreamt of joining the 20-year-long waiting lists.”

Text messaging has allowed people to exchange information and communicate efficiently at both national and international levels. Patients can now receive reminders to take their medicine, saving time and money traveling to local clinics. As farmers in india receive market demand and pricing data for their products, young teens from the slums of Nairobi receive messages alerting them regarding job opportunities in the city. It has become clear that SMS use has great potential in campaigning, public awareness, disaster alerts and for NGO work in developing nations. /however, most ICT-inspired organizations concentrate on designing and developing ‘top-end’ systems for SMS-based services, while the door is often shut to the grassroots possibilities.

“Texting works where wires can’t reach, and often functions even when regular cell phone service fails. Because mobile telephony is leapfrogging the constraints of fixed telco infrastructure, the mobile phone is now the key technology platform to focus on for service delivery and development. The stats speak volumes: growth of mobile phone usage in Africa alone was 140% in the last 12 months.” (source: worldchanging.org)

Here is a list of some interesting mobile phone initiatives, thinking about solutions for the developing world:

FrontlineSMS is a communications solution for NGOs working in the developing world. Their system encorporates a mobile phone hub, connected to a PC or laptop computer. This hub receives, saves and replies to incoming SMS messages. They explain that certain logics can be applied to this system, such as programming so that it serves as a way to access information remotely. For example, it is possible to send an SMS message with a bus number, and get a reply with the times and location of that bus.

CAM is a mobile application framework for the rural developing world, being developed in the computer science department at the University of Washington. They use semacodes with mobile phones, aiding the process of filling out forms for local entities in the third world.

MobileActive - a global network of people, tools, projects and resources focused on the use of mobile phones for activism, campaigns, and civic engagement. This is a great source of information regarding different mobile phone initiatives, looking at this technology as an emerging tool for use in social change campaigns.

Textually.org is another fantastic portal to get information regarding mobile phone usage in the developing world.