Cell phones

This is a really interesting article about cell phones and how rich and poor alike around the world covet them.

I had actually read about the guy profiled in the article, Jan Chipchase, who does on-the-ground marketing research for Nokia in countries around the world, a few months ago. His story got me interested in learning more about how communication and technology can help alleviate poverty.

Cell phones are certainly popular here, and the biggest cell phone provider, China Mobile, has more subscribers than any other phone company in the world (350 million and expanding at 5-10 million subscribers each month!). From my experience, cell phone coverage and call quality is better here than in the U.S., and more Chinese use their phones for email, pictures, games, and videos than Americans do.

One of the newer capabilities of cell phones is as a credit card. In countries like Finland and Japan, people can use their cell phones to pay for bus tickets or buy things from vending machines. A new system is being developed in China to allow people to wire money and make purchases through simple text messages. The more than 100 million rural migrants working in cities and factories in eastern and southern China send billions of dollars back to their relatives. Traditional wire transfer services charge high commissions and money sent physically risks being lost or stolen along the way. Rural residents also don’t have easy access to banks or ATMs.

Text message transactions offer a simple solution by allowing people to send a text message to the account number of a shop owner or a relative. The first message states an amount of money to transfer and they receive a second message to confirm that an electronic transfer was made. Just as microcredit loans are giving the poor around the world access to small amounts of capital to start and expand small businesses, soon cell phones could give the poor access to simple electronic banking.

Another cool new innovation with cell phones to help the rural poor is going on in India. Many villages are not wired with landlines so there is no phone or Internet access. And in many places, there are still no cell phone towers either. So small cell phone signal boxes are being installed on the public buses and courier motorcycles that make daily trips to most rural villages. Cell phones and computers are being programmed to send and receive text messages and emails when a bus or motorcycle broadcasting a mobile phone signal happens to drive by. The signal box picks up new messages and drops of responses to old messages. A little programming work even allows computer users to enter an Internet search and get the caches of the top several websites downloaded to the computer the next day, after the search has been relayed to a cell phone signal box on a bus, which then travels to a city, downloads the search results, and passes the information on to the computer the next time it swings by.

We take for granted most of the simple things that make our lives much better, like cell phones, email, ATMs, and modern medicine. But only a small fraction of the world has access to those modern conveniences. A lot of smart people are using technology and some innovative ideas to make these things cheaper and more accessible, so that even the world’s most poor and illiterate people can benefit from them.