The developing countries in South Asia have seen a tremendous growth in mobile services.  Villagers beginning to buy mobile phones is indicative of an explosive growth in mobile services in countries where the poorest people live. About 85% of people who become new mobile subscribers everyday live in emerging markets, according to the mobile phone industry body, the GSMA. China and India have become leaders in the technology with the growth rate of 6 million mobiles per month in India alone. One of the reasons for such a growth is also that it's easier and faster to put in cellular towers than to put in land lines, and as a result, cellular use is exploding. This growth though has been lopsided, often being limited to bigger urban areas, essentially meaning that penetration in the rural and remote locations has been limited.

Bridging the divide

Making various communication technologies relevant to people on the wrong side of this glaring digital divide is basically about providing information and knowledge services, which are related to their livelihood. After all, for what would a small-scale farmer in India, Bangladesh or Pakistan want a mobile phone? Market information. Timely knowledge about who is buying potatoes today, what the buyers are willing to pay and where they are located can be vitally important to those who are just getting by.  Computer and other ICTs are relatively expensive and not widespread in these parts and they also require the users to be literate - more importantly e-Literate. However, mobile phone connectivity with its ease of use is easily adoptable and in nations plagued by connectivity lapses, this technology may well emerge as the key to bridging the divide.

            The growth of mobile phones could rake in benefits of ICTs to poor people rapidly. The CPE  has come down drastically making it suitable for mass usage. However in most areas around South Asia, people have never had any connectivity and in places where people have all the time but no money, it is not easy to ‘sell’ the concept of mobiles.  Rural areas warrant an inherent need of connectivity as well as the generation of specific mobile-based services, the appropriate selection of which involves several points of consideration: 
• Is the m-Service need based?
• Is it focused?
• Is it affordable?

If mobiles are only for providing communication services, it would be difficult to find any direct poverty alleviation effect and hence the adoption rates may not live upto expectations. Though, it’s well established that improving teledensity provides more economic benefit than any other kind of infrastructure investment, including roads, electricity and even education.

m-Services: Emerging Markets 

Experts have enlisted several areas in which mobile applications can be used to have a direct impact on the lives of rural people. These are mainly- Health information, financial facilities, Business development services, m-Governance, and Infotainment.
• Small and Medium Enterprises – Business Development- Small businesses in rural areas often have to travel significant distances to markets or other places they can distribute their goods, and cannot make arrangements in advance with buyers or other sellers. Mobile phones could significantly change the logistical issues faced by rural traders and home entrepreneurs, by affording mobile-based ordering systems, delivery requests, and the ability to make more reliable and advance arrangements with business partners or clients.
• m-Healthcare - New mobile services in this area could better connect rural communities, creating networks to share and discuss health information and advice. Several such systems are already under research.
• m-Governance - Accessing information about public services remains a major challenge for many rural communities. Mobile phones provide a new platform through which rural communities will be able to access government information and services, using text, data, and audio browsing techniques.
• m-Learning - A range of educational services could be provided via mobiles to children in remote villages and communities. Mobile phones could serve as an essential means for children to become connected to one another for educational and peer-learning activities. These are particularly important for communities that are either nomadic or transitional on account of displacements due to a natural disaster etc.
• m-Banking - m-Banking might help to serve the three billion people who currently have no access to financial services, according to the World Bank. Mobile phones are already being used in rural areas as a tool for financial transactions by swapping airtime for goods and services. Mobile networks and financial services institutions could work together to test and develop new financial services in this area and address how people can transfer these credits into cash.
• Entertainment - While the mainstream entertainment industry is already well aware of the emerging potential of mobile media, there are also many opportunities for local, peer-to-peer content to be created and distributed, affording new cultural and economic opportunities to rural communities.

Image Credit: Sayalee Joshi, Mobile Development Report, eAsia, Malaysia, 2007

m-Services: Innovative practices

Several techniques have been tried out in an attempt to innovate and make m-Services suited to the needs of rural people. One such technique has been devised in Bangladesh wherein the concept of a “mobile lady” has been floated. The mobile lady with mobile phone in hand goes from door-to-door in villages for making poor people access livelihood advices through advisers at help desks. The earnings from the “help line” services have been deemed enough to cover both fixed and variable costs and have been observed to be financially viable for the mobile lady. However, the financial viability problem for the help desk has not been resolved. It is important to note that without sustainability of the help desk, help line model’s sustainability will not matter in the long run.  This experimentation in livelihood contents has been making an impact on the livelihood of the poor people in rural Bangladesh since 2003. As the mobile lady moves door-to-door, the delivery of services and promotion takes place simultaneously. Generally, across the globe, it is difficult to make people come to the telecentres or knowledge centres, as it is a matter of behavioral change of the people, which takes longer time. This approach has solved the problem of mind shifting of the rural people. Much like the mobile-lady, rural entrepreneurs have been encouraged all over South Asia to start up rural mobile phone centres with the help of micro-finance institutes which provide loans to these people for the initial capital expenditure.
Such an approach has also been started in rural areas in India where farmer helpline numbers, accessible through mobile phones, are provided for, by advisers moving across fields, encouraging farmers to make calls using the mobile devices. This model has seen moderate success. Meanwhile, some farmers are able to receive better prices for their crops because they have access to information on market prices, primarily via mobile phones. And new technology is allowing the local villagers to sell mobile phone time to the poor in even smaller units - through prepay top-ups that are done through phone-to-phone links rather than using cards

 As mentioned before, apart from the major towns, mobile coverage has remained fragmented and this has been in-part because the electricity network, used to power the mobile network infrastructure, is often unreliable and does not cover the whole of the country. For instance, one third of Indian homes are not connected to the power grid and demand for mobile phones is growing rapidly.  A pilot scheme has been started in India, wherein mobile firms hope to overcome some of these problems by using mobile base stations that use generators running on biodiesel.  Crops will be used to generate biodiesel to fuel mobile base stations.

m-Services: Impact Assessment

An enormous number of people, including taxi drivers and tradesmen, now rely on mobile phones to run their small businesses. The mobile phone boom has transformed ordinary people into micro-entrepreneurs.
According to ethnographic research results based on counterfactual samples taken in these areas a marked change in the business of the individuals has been observed. Results reveal that due to the usage of mobile devices, accessing market information becomes possible for these people. Critical economic information becomes available immediately. Travel across long distances decreases or is optimized. Transport is easier to coordinate and is used more efficiently and is optimized by sharing or distributing its costs. Remote management and coordination of resources at multiple sites and maintaining remote client relationships is possible. Access to new clientele without having to be physically co-located is feasible. Given more leisure time, a tighter business network, and critical market information, new sources of revenue can be explored.

Increased mobile phone usage has had a socio-psychological change amongst users. Studies show that users perceive themselves to have entered the modern public sphere creating scopes to get access to information, services and the scope to participate in up-streaming of information. They become contactable, locatable, and traceable for institutions contributing to improve livelihood. They perceive enhancements to their credibility and creditworthiness. Family relationships and social networks also have a marked positive effect. Greater individualization and disintegration from the family structure occurs and increased privacy of communications and autonomy of actions is seen. Users are better able to maintain long distance ties with a decreased dependency on proximal, local relationships.

The Way Ahead…

Despite success however mobile-phone based service delivery systems have had a number of limitations-
• Lack of a number of services: Generally only help-line and commercial phone services are available so far in these countries through the mobile phones;
• Financial Sustainability: the mobile phone service and equipment charges have been reducing, so there is threat to the financial viability and the ARPU is low. This has also meant that service providers have not catered to traditionally or shown interest in such areas.
• Lack of local content: local content generation is not an easy task as traditionally these areas have lacked services directed towards them and there is a lack of inbuilt local interest amongst the people. The content could be made available through the mobile phone although it is not convenient for the users, as the screen is very small.
• National Policies: Even though most nations have recognized the power of mobiles, the policies still favour traditional service providers and efforts have to be put in so that they are made development centric and conducive to the needs of the rural masses.

The path however is clear, the importance of ICTs to the population in the rural and remote areas is undeniable. Several new business models are being developed which can increase the penetration levels of mobiles and can also help benefit the masses in a manner most suited to them. The challenge is to learn from the success and the failures to move ahead!

The author - Upasna Kakroo (upasna.kakroo @ gmail.com)