Most mobiles…

I found this on LIRNEasia’s blog today — a pointer to an interesting article on Grameen Village Phone by Richard Shaffer at Fast Company.  The whole thing is worth a look, but the point is this: as more people in Bangladesh acquire mobile phones, operating a village phone franchise isn’t quite as lucrative as it used to be.

Ten years ago, Begum provided the sole telephone in Patira and the surrounding area, the only connection for nearly 10,000 people. Today, she must vie with 284 other Village Phone operators nearby, plus all the cell phones her neighbors have bought for themselves as prices have come down. As a result, Begum’s phone rentals these days bring in monthly profits of only $22. “If I didn’t have so many other businesses,” she told me, “I couldn’t afford to be in this one.” Says her loan officer, Salim Khan, general manager of a Grameen Bank branch: “She is fortunate that she began when she did. Today, poor women who go into the phone business stay poor.”

Of course, this general shift toward handset ownership and increased ‘teledensity’ isn’t surprising – there are clear advantages to owning a phone of one’s own.  Thanks to phone ladies, people who previously could not make calls at all are now able to place calls, from time to time. Meanwhile, new mobile owners, who previously had to rely on public phones, now can make and receive calls, whenever they want.

But the shared phone dynamic isn’t disappearing entirely (yet). For the time being, it is just getting more complex.  As detailed in the article, Begum is losing clients in three ways 1) some are buying their own handset. 2) some are going to other, presumably more convenient village phones and 3) some are borrowing from an increasingly broad range of friends and family.  I’d like to understand the relative importance of (2) vs (3), and the choices non-handset-owning people make about when to use either option. My hunch is that relying on a shared (friendly) phone has both advantages and disadvantages over the village payphone—but some more data would be helpful here.