Mobile phone is amazingly successful in developing countries partly due to the fact that the price of mobile phones is very low: phones are local or imported second hand, fake from China, broken and refurbished, sold on grey market, gifts or donations. New mobiles represent a relatively small fraction of the total market.
Success is also due to the new generation of operators entering in this juicy business to provide such highly demanded mobile services with only limited investments. The need for communication services is so extensive among the poor that they are willing to make the choice to purchase the prepaid airtime to seek for job, aid, assistance, rescue or support when in need. In many developing countries more than 90% of the mobile users are using prepaid airtime as they definitely can not afford a monthly subscription. Their income is too small and irregular, and they have no bank account to ensure a subscription.
It was a big surprise to the developed world some years ago to discover the creativity that the poor have to get access to the basic mobile services in developing countries. Mobile basic services are matching so well with the needs in that context. This joyful appetite to adopt innovative technology and services transformed developing countries in research laboratories to test new mobile services in the most promising areas: money transfer, mHealth, mLearning, information on market prices, jobs market, micro financing, etc. There are a lot of pilot projects to test new ideas: some without much chance of success and some growing to be a new and unexpected source of big profit. It gives an impression of indecency when we see new greedy entrepreneurs rushing to the new promised land of the "Bottom of the Pyramid" (nicely coined as BoP) considered as the big booming and lucrative bursting communication eldorado of the poorest living with less than 2 us$ per day. Marketing the BoP is most trendy.
Former national telecommunication monopolies were challenged by the irruption of the new Internet business model and they lost much of their initial power to control information ecosystem. Telecommunications were a limited but profitable source of revenue for the states. It took to the ITU and World Bank several years through conferences, workshops and lobbying to get the developing country leaders interested in telecommunication market liberalization and competition - political power always needs to control information. Before the Internet, national public administrations of telecommunications were functioning as bureaucracies, while private enterprises made perhaps some profit but were not very different. The advent of the Internet changed the rules, as it was necessary to provide a new range of services that they were not able to provide at an affordable price. New private enterprises were able to address quite successfuly this new market. The new freedom embedded in the Internet stimulated deep cultural, social, economic and technological switch all over the world. In developing countries this process had a restrained impact or was very limited due to scarce connectivity. In a sense, scarce connectivity and controlled information, as well as ignorance and illiteracy are enhancing the non-democratic governments to remain in place.
The mobile operators are bringing simultaneously a challenge and a solution. In fact they are most important actors in rebuilding a new generation of telecommunication monopolies with the support of national authorities, centered on mobile technologies through proprietary networks. The states are licensing spectrum slices to them, through auctions or other less precise procedures. Quite easily some of these operators are becoming multinationals through friendly or aggressive mergers. On one hand they will share nicely the private control of the mobile information ecosystem, on the other hand they will manage to get as much profit as possible making an exclusive use of the electro-magnetic spectrum, which is a public commons as water or air. No space is remaining on the spectrum or in the law for public free (as in freedom) non profit and open use targeting the poorest. The only option remaining is to solicit these operators for compassion or social responsibility. So they are sometimes sponsoring pilot projects, reports and campaigns to test new mobile-based experiments or services. If it is not a new magic spring of benefit, at least it can be good for the image of the generous donor and possible communication campaigns.
How NGOs or public institutions can stop begging telecommunications operators to get the right to create or access networks to design, develop and manage free mobile services to combat poverty in perspective with the UN Millennium Development Goals? As they paid for it, the telecommunications operators are exclusive managers of the spectrum, this kind of monopoly is not fair. Eli Noam is writing "It won’t be long, historically speaking, before spectrum auctions may become technologically obsolete, economically inefficient, and legally unconstitutional." (in Spectrum Auctions: Yesterday’s Heresy, Today’s Orthodoxy, Tomorrow’s Anachronism. Taking the Next Step to Open Spectrum Access). We surely need to negotiate with national and local authorities, and with the people "at the BoP". But in addition, may be NGOs and public institutions need international agreements or standards to get a free use of the spectrum, build and/or use freely the networks necessary to combat poverty.
Technology literacy in the area of spectrum management is not widely shared. So in the discussions it is sometimes difficult to overcome some prevalent clichés where telecom operators are considered as proprietary of the spectrum. But the electro-magnetic spectrum is a natural commons that can be managed today in the benefit of all, using up-to-date technology and new law. Since many years some organizations as Association for Progressive Communications, The Spectrum Policy Program of the New America Foundation and The Open Spectrum Alliance are lobbying in that sense. It is now a hot and growing research area involving famous Universities and people. ITU and World Bank through InfoDev are also surveying very closely this area and training regulators from developing countries as part of their mandate. What space will be given to consider seriously the rights, needs and interests of the poorest for free basic mobile services (for health, education, development, etc…) in all those smart, crossed debates and interests?
