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.

Here is a nice piece in the New Scientist, outlining some of the ways smartphones are being used in a variety of important initiatives in the developing world: microfinance, m-banking, civil society, health surveillance, and education.  The crux/core quote: 

“Smartphones are probably much more revolutionary for developing countries,” says John Canny, an engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, who is creating educational video games that run on smartphones… “Here smartphones are a bit gimmicky. In the developing regions you have hostile conditions for a PC so phones have a lot of potential to become the computing platform for people,” says Canny.

The article starts by describing some applications which run on basic handsets, and then moves on to detail those which are utilizing more advanced functionality like photography, audio recording, and data transfer. I’d put a slightly finer point on things, and would emphasize that hardware and connectivity costs still limit the settings into which smartphones can be deployed.  What the more broad-based, often occasional, applications lack in processing power they make up in accessibility and ubiquity.  For example, the M-PESA system, like many m-banking systems, runs as well on a $30 handset as it does on a smart $300 handset.

On the other hand, we are seeing fascinating smartphone initiatives, where a relatively small number of devices are distributed into specialized settings with relatively intense informational needs (such as classrooms or microfinance organizations). The costs of the smartphones are often surmountable as long as the devices can be dedicated to certain high-value tasks, or shared between lots of people.  As the cost of smartphone functionality comes down, and as data access becomes more available and affordable, we’ll see these distinctions blur, and the set of possibilities will continue to expand.

One additional comment on the headline, which I think does the otherwise informative article a disservice. Smartphones are a helpful and affordable way to accomplish many of the tasks for which previously one might have wanted to use a PC. But smartphones are not, as the article’s headline asserts, “the PCs of the developing world.” The developing world is now and will be characterized by a higher ratio of mobiles to PCs, but that does not make PCs irrelevant, unaffordable, or unwanted. Ask the local “developing world” hospital, or the university, or Wipro, for that matter, if they are ready to give up their PCs for smartphones. 

While perusing Balancing Act (Issue #365), I found a link to this story on m-banking in Namibia and Botswana, centered on an interview with First National Bank (FNB) cellphone banking CEO Len Pienaar.  Among the quotes:

“In SA, we have a high density of banking options, such as ATMs, card-accepting devices, and even branches. In Namibia, for example, this is much lower and you have a huge rural population,” explains Pienaar.

He says the bank’s approach to cellphone banking has adapted to the needs of different countries, with customers in Namibia and Botswana having to register for mobile banking in-branch so they can be shown exactly how to use the technology.

“Mobile networks are well-established in most of the countries we are in, and the technology, such as SMSes, is well-known,” says Pienaar.

In the space of just a few lines, Pienaar has touched on many of the factors which will influence m-banking’s trajectory in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world:  an awareness of what m-banking offers, relative to alternatives, the need for some hand-holding to get new users comfortable with the system, and the relative familiarity that people have with the technology (SMS) already.  Sounds like a diffusion of innovations case study, and I mean that in a good way.

DIRSI–Diálogo Regional sobre Sociedad de la Infomación–posted what looks like the entire set of presentations and comments from a July 4 discussion in Lima on “Understanding the Contribution of Mobile Telephony to Development in LAC” (Latin America and the Carribean).

More research and background papers from DIRSI are available on their homepages (English) (en Español).

A recent piece in the Economist highlights the increasing importance of information technologies, particularly mobile communication technologies, to international aid and disaster relief efforts.  Most of the piece details the nuts-and-bolts of logistics, for which mobile ICTs are clearly a helpful new arrival. Responders can stay in touch and better coordinate their efforts. So too can displaced or fragmented families, who can find each other via electronic databases.

The article contains two other elements which make more sweeping claims about the “shifting balance” or reconfiguration of relationships between the aid community and those they are trying to help.  The more grounded example is that of the role of large remittance flows via m-payments systems and shop-at-a-distance sites like Makuru.com. I think this raises an important point: as families with overseas members become increasingly connected via mobiles and other ICTs, there are real opportunities for micro-level, family-centric responses to macro-level events like floods and famines.

The second point is less clear-cut.  The article leads with a quote from the Horn of Africa, in the form of an SMS delivered to UN officials in London and Nairobi. 

“MY NAME is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear Sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilograms of food. You must help.”

It’s a great anecdote–though perhaps still more aspirational than descriptive–which the author(s) use to assert that “a familiar flow of authority, from rich donor to grateful recipient, had been reversed.” It will be interesting to watch how, over time, donors and other actors in the humanitarian space integrate mediated feedback and participitory input from ‘recipients’ into relief response. 

In the meantime, we can draw a different theme from the anecdote: the author of the SMS found the contact numbers at an internet café. And, conversely, you and I are reading the quote via the internet again.   This hybridity of media—an intermingling of SMS messages and internet content—is something I expect we’ll see more of in the developing world.