Relentless rise of the mobile phone rings changes for world’s poor

By Shafiq Alam

CHOWGACHI, Bangladesh: With just four calls from a mobile phone, remote Bangladeshi farmer Mir Jahid Hussein can now ensure he gets the best price for his seasonal jute seeds—something he could once only dream of. As it is for tens of millions of poor rural-dwellers in developing countries from Bangladesh to Botswana, mobile-phone technology is revolutionizing Hus­sein’s life for the better, enabling him to cut out cheating middlemen and deal directly with buyers from district markets.

The march of the mobile-phone phenomenon is relentless, with 1.65 billion cellular connections worldwide at the end of 2004 and forecast to rise up to 10 percent annually to 2.32 billion in 2008, according to US research group Gartner Inc.

Like most people living below the poverty line, Hussein, who ekes out a meager living from half a hectare (one acre) of land, can’t afford a phone of his own. Despite this he is still able to take advantage of the technological revolution.

The biggest growth in mobile telephones is now expected to come from developing countries such as Indonesia and India, analysts say, as telecoms companies switch strategies away from saturated developed markets such as Europe, the United States and Japan to largely untapped poorer nations.

“Europe is almost at 100 percent capacity, while South Africa is around seven percent,” says Andrew Chet­ham, principal analyst for Gartner Inc. in Hong Kong.

“Companies are now getting better at making money from the lower end, with cheaper handsets, especially in the Philippines,” says Chetham, who says handsets are generally priced between US$200 and US$300. “Everyone is looking for the US$40-dollar handset, which can still make them money,” he adds.

In China, too, poor farmers have benefited from the spread of mobile phones through text messages giving them information about prices, weather forecasts and pest control.

Ministry of Information figures released in January showed the number of Chinese subscribers topped 334 million in 2004, up 65 million on the previous year.

The rate of growth in India’s mobile-phone market is second only to China.

The country is adding an extra 1.8 million customers every month compared to five million a month in China. According to the Cellular Operators Association of India 49.92 million Indians now possess a mobile phone in a country where bureaucracy has traditionally made landlines difficult to secure. The number now exceeds the number of landlines, which stands at 45 million.s

In South Africa thousands of migrant workers and their families have taken advantage of their newfound access to mobiles.

“The cell-phone revolution has allowed users to leapfrog from archaic forms of communication straight into the digital era,” says Yvonne Muthien, spokeswoman for the MTN Group, the country’s second largest mobile phone company with 7.7 million subscribers.

In the past, millions of rural South Africans went to a local store to make their calls or write letters. Many were denied a landline because they did not have a bank account or a fixed address to which bills could be sent. Now, more than 85 percent of black-owned small businesses rely solely on mobile phones, according to a study by the world’s biggest cell-phone provider Vodafone Group.

“We used to write a letter to inform a family member working in the mine about any problem the family faced. That took weeks, but now we have cell phones,” says Mantinga Mazantsana, a taxi driver.

But not everyone will be joining the revolution anytime soon. Myanmar is one of the few countries where mobile phones have yet to permeate widely—strictly controlled by the military government, they remain the exclusive preserve of the wealthy and well-connected.

There are currently fewer than 200,000 cell phones in use in a country of 42 million people.

The nation’s rich and famous are frequently seen with a mobile phone pressed to their ear. But with a connection costing more than US$1,100, the benefits enjoyed by the poor of so many other nations remain an unattainable dream for the majority