In this post, I’ll talk about the informal service infrastructure that supports mobile phone use at the bottom of the pyramid.

Here, Jan Chipchase documents informal repair cultures in the developing world and asks –

What can we learn from informal repair cultures? Aside from the benefits, what are the risks for consumers and for companies whose products are repaired, refurbished and resold? Given the benefit to (bottom of the pyramid) consumers are there elements of the repair ecosystem that can be exported to other cultures? Can the same skills be applied to other parts of the value chain? And, given the range of resources and skills available what would it take to turn cultures of repair into cultures of innovation?

Here, Jan Chipchase and Duncan Burns explore street hacks for mobile phones (an update of the informal repair culture presentation) –

Here, Stuart Henshall (not from Nokia) shares his experience in buying a ‘China phone’ at Mumbai’s Manish Market.

The cost of a repaired/ refurbished phone in the gray/ black market is often less than a third of the original handset. The informal repair culture is often convenient, efficient, fast and cheap, especially for poor customers who often don’t have warranty. Together, they reduces both the initial cost of acquisition and the total cost of ownership and increase the lifetime of products, making them accessible to bottom of the pyramid customers. Not only that, these vendors often offer value add services like unlocking phones, installing pirated software, and uploading songs, extending the use cases of these low cost phones.

Here, Jan Chipchase and Indri Tulusan talk about street battery charging services in Uganda that enable residents without regular access to mains power to keep their mobile phone’s charged. It’s another example of how electricity is the bottleneck for mobile use in emerging Asia and Africa.

Finally, Jan Chipchase, Indri Tulusan and Lokesh Bitra deep dive into the practice of community address books maintained by phone kiosk owner to record the phone numbers used by their customers, a study that links back to their research on shared phone use.

In another post, I’ll talk about how all this fits into Homegrown (slides), Nokia’s umbrella project that includes Nokia Remade (phones made from recycled material), Zero Waste, People First, Everyone Connected, and, perhaps, even the Five Dollar Comparison (slides).

In yet another post, I’ll write about the importance of Nokia Life Tools, Nokia’s collaboration with Reuters Market Light and Idea Cellular to bring critical information to rural phone users in India (see Ken Banks, Ashish Sinha and Kiruba Shankar).

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You can download the presentation with notes in a PPTX format, or view it online in a PDF format.

SLIDE 1: Global Digital Divide 2.0: Always Off in an Always On World

We can talk about digital divide in many contexts: between countries and within countries, driven by differences in race, gender, education, income and location. In this presentation, I’ll focus on the global digital divide, or the digital divide between countries, but the same ideas are often applicable to digital divides within countries.

SLIDE 2: Introduction

My views on this topic are colored by my own biases. In terms of education and experience, I’m a marketer. In my present role as the GU-ISD Yahoo! Fellow, I’m a quasi-academic. In terms of inclination, I’m a social media enthusiast and my next avatar may be as a social entrepreneur. A lot of the work I’m doing is at the intersection of technology, culture and development and it is informed by my understanding of emerging markets and emerging technologies.

SLIDE 3: Global Digital Divide

Let’s start off by looking at some examples of global digital divide.

SLIDE 4: The Link Between ICTs & GDP

Access to communications technologies is directly linked to the country’s GDP, especially for newer technologies like broadband. The distribution of older technologies like internet and mobile is less skewed, but it’s often a moving target. For instance, high income countries as defined by the World Bank, contribute to 15.7% of the world’s population but 79.9% of the world’s GDP. They also contribute 38.7% of the world’s mobile phone users, 42.7% of the world’s fixed phone users, 55.7% of the world’s internet users and 74% of the world’s broadband users ¹.

SLIDE 5: World Map of Computer Penetration

The skewed distribution of technology is true for computers…²

SLIDE 6: World Map of Internet Penetration

internet access…³

SLIDE 7: World Map: Optical Fiber

optical fiber networks…⁴

SLIDE 8: Cost of Broadband Access

and cost of broadband access⁵. For instance, the cost of broadband access in Japan is $0.06 per 100 kbps (0.002% of average monthly wage) whereas in Mozambique it’s $361.83 per 100 kbps (1400 times average monthly wage).

SLIDE 9: Cost of Broadband Access

The same disparity exists between high income and low income countries on the whole. The cost of broadband access as a percentage of average monthly per capita income is 2.1% for high-income countries, compared to 909% for low-income countries. ⁶

SLIDE 10: Cost of ICT Access

The cost of internet and mobile access are less skewed. The cost of internet access as a percentage of average monthly per capita income is 0.9% for high-income countries, compared to 172% for low-income countries. The cost of mobile access as a percentage of average monthly per capita income is 0.7% for high-income countries, compared to 54.9% for low-income countries ⁷. The relatively flat cost of mobile access is, in fact, one of the main reasons why mobile penetrations have increase so fast in developing countries.

SLIDE 11: Reasons for Differential Technological Achievement

At this stage, it is perhaps useful to step back from ICTs, look at technology in general, and enquire into the reasons for differential technological achievement between countries.

SLIDE 12: Three Types of Technology Transfers

Technology transfer can happen in three ways in developing countries: new-to-market technologies can be invented in the country, technologies invented elsewhere can be adapted by the country, and technologies adapted by parts of the country can diffuse to the rest of the country⁸.

SLIDE 13: Technology Adaption vs. Diffusion

The good news is that the rate at which technology is adapted by emerging countries has increased: on average, the time it takes before official statistics in a developing country record significant exploitation of a new technology has declined from almost 100 years for innovations discovered in the 1800s to about 20 years for innovations discovered in the late 1900s.

The bad news is that emerging countries fair poorly on both invention and diffusion: even for technologies discovered during 1975–2000, only one third of the developing countries that have achieved at least a 5% penetration level have gone on to reach the 25% threshold and less than 10% have reached a 50% penetration level⁹.

SLIDE 14: Technological Achievement Index

As a result, even though the rapid progress in developing countries has led to relative convergence, the gap between high income and low income countries remains large.

In general, the level of technological achievement observed in a country is positively correlated with income levels. However, considerable variation is apparent within income groups.

Interestingly, the penetration rates of newer technologies such as mobile phones, computers, and the Internet (many of which are provided by corporations operating in competitive markets) are more directly correlated with income than is the case for older technologies such as fixed-line telephones, electrical power, transportation, and health care services (many of which were originally provided by governments)¹⁰.

SLIDE 15: What is Digital Divide 2.0?

As we discussed before, the digital divide will exist as long as income inequities exist. Over time, however, the shape of the digital divide has shifted.

SLIDE 16: The 4 Cs of Digital Divide 2.0

The 4 Cs of Digital Divide 2.0 include computing devices, connectivity, content, and capabilities.

In academic discussions on digital divide, two broad groups can be identified. The Digital Binary group has focused on access (computing devices and connectivity) whereas the Digital Inequality group has looked a broader definition of the digital divide that includes applications (content and capabilities) apart from access^{11 12}.

The difficulties in bridging the digital divide often increase as we move from computing devices and connectivity to content and capabilities.

SLIDE 17: Digital Divide 2.0

As we move from internet and mobile to broadband, 3G and next generation networks on the access side and from SMS and e-mail to web 2.0, mobile 2.0 and the semantic web on the application side, it is difficult to not notice that digital equality is a moving target. As the gap on older technologies narrows down, new gaps on new technologies open up. The global digital divide, in fact, is widening, instead of narrowing.

Specifically, even as the ubiquitous use of mobile phones bridges the digital divide between the developed and developed countries, another digital divide — digital divide 2.0 — is opening up between them. Digital divide 2.0 is not about access to communications devices; it’s about the ability to leverage the power of group-forming social communications technologies to collaborate with others, self-organize into grassroots communities and create crowd-sourced content that is relevant for these communities.

SLIDE 18: The Promise/ Myth of Leapfrogging

Leapfrogging is the idea that poor countries can skip over stages in technology adoption (especially large-scale, industrial, infrastructure-heavy technologies) and directly adopt newer, better technologies (especially light-weight, distributed, ecologically sustainable digital technologies).

SLIDE 19: The Promise of Leapfrogging

The classic example of leapfrogging is the ubiquitous adoption of mobile phones in the developing world. The idea that access to mobile phones will transform the world has become popular not only in the academic and development circles, but also in mass media and popular culture.

Consider this ad film from Indian mobile operator Idea Cellular that promises education for all through mobile phones¹³ –

SLIDE 20: The Economic Value of Mobile

This idea is widely supported by research.

In 2005, research conducted by Leonard Waverman of London Business School showed that a developing country which had an average of 10 more mobile phones per 100 population between 1996 and 2003 would have enjoyed per capita GDP growth that was 0.59% higher than an otherwise identical country¹⁴.

In 2006, McKinsey & Co. found that the mobile industry contributes as much as 8% to the GDP of some countries, after factoring in direct impact from operators, indirect impact from other industry participants and the surplus created for enterprise and retail users¹⁵.

In fact, the very nature of mobile technology makes it an especially good leapfrogger: it works using radio, so there is no need to rely on physical infrastructure such as roads and phone wires; base-stations can be powered using their own generators in places where there is no electrical grid; and you do not have to be literate to use a phone, which is handy if your country’s education system is in a mess. Unfortunately, the mobile phone turns out to be rather unusual and the widespread diffusion of most digital technologies is dependent on the existence of a solid social, economic and industrial infrastructure¹⁶.

SLIDE 21: The Myth of Leapfrogging

Unfortunately, the mobile phone turns out to be rather unusual and the widespread diffusion of most digital technologies is dependent on the existence of a solid social, economic and industrial infrastructure.

Broadly, two sets of obstacles stand in the way of technological progress in emerging economies. The first is their technological inheritance. Most advances are based on the labors of previous generations: you need electricity to run computers and mobile phone networks. The second is the country’s capacity to absorb technology: which is dependent on education, R&D, financial systems, rule of law, business climate and good governance.

SLIDE 22: Mobile Interface for Illiterate Users

Even in the case of mobile phones, owning one is not the same as knowing how to use one.

In a long term qualitative research led by Jan Chipchase, the Nokia Research team found that non-literate mobile phone users typically know how to turn on the phone, receive calls and make local calls, but often struggle with features that require text editing, such as making long distance calls (by using prefixes), creating a contact, saving a text message, and creating a text message. Based on the research, they concluded that bringing personal, convenient, synchronous and asynchronous communication within the reach of textually non-literate users will require design innovations at three levels: on the phone; in the communications eco-system; and on the carrier network¹⁷.

SLIDE 23: Telecom Usage at the BOP

Similarly, in a large-scale quantitative research conducted in 2006, LIRNEasia found that most mobile users at the bottom of the pyramid felt that the phone improved their ability to learn and earn.

Still, most users only knew how to perform the most basic tasks on their phones. For instance, only 35% of the respondents in India had used SMS, because of low literacy and the absence of any social need to use it. 72% of the respondents in India hadn’t even heard of the internet¹⁸.

SLIDE 24: Telecom Usage at the BOP

Let’s look at these two videos to get a flavor of telecom usage at the bottom of the pyramid ^{19 20} –

SLIDE 25: How to Bridge Digital Divide 2.0?

The big question, of course, is: how do we bridge digital divide 2.0?

The good news is that we do know what to do. The bad news is that there are are no shortcuts to bridge the digital divide.

SLIDE 26: Government Policy is Important

Government policy is important, both for building linkages with other countries for technology adaption and for building the country’s absorptive capacity for technology diffusion. Only when these two are in place will the spillover and multiplier effects of communications technologies kick in²¹.

SLIDE 27: Grassroots Innovations Are Equally Important

…but grassroots innovations are equally important in bridging the digital divide.

Here are a few of my favorite ICT4D grassroots innovations.

SLIDE 28: VNL MicroTelecom (India)

VNL’s WorldGSM MicroTelecom is a low cost, rugged, solar powered mobile network designed to serve rural populations profitably.

SLIDE 29: Grameen Village Phone (Bangladesh)

The Grameen Foundation gives microloans to help poor rural woman become public phone operators.

SLIDE 30: United Villages (India)

United Villages uses a van fitted with wifi to connect villages to the internet, with a time lag.

SLIDE 31: QuestionBox (India)

QuestionBox uses human mediation to connect illiterate users to the internet.

SLIDE 32: EkGaon CAMS Mobile Framework (India)

EkGaon’s CAMS Mobile Framework is a paper-mobile hybrid document management system for semi-literate users.

SLIDE 33: BabaJob/ Microsoft Research (India)

BabaJob and Microsoft Research have created a text free job search engine.

SLIDE 34: Ushahidi (Kenya)

Ushahidi uses a Google Maps mashup to map crisis information using text messages sent by users.

SLIDE 35: MobiChange (India)

MobiChange, a project I’m evangelizing, hopes to develop a lowest common denominator mobile social networking platform.

SLIDE 36: Discussion

Finally, I’ll leave you with three questions –

- Is the digital divide narrowing or widening?
- Is leapfrogging a myth or reality?
- Is government policy more important, or grassroots innovations?

References

- 1 ITU-UNCTAD World Information Society Report, 2007 

- 2 United Nations Global Development Goals Indication

- 3 Emiel van Wegen based on World Internet Stats data

- 4 Tata Communications

- 5 Wired Magazine based on ITU data

- 6 ITU-UNCTAD World Information Society Report, 2007

- 7 ITU-UNCTAD World Information Society Report, 2007

- 8 World Bank Global Economic Prospects, 2008

- 9 World Bank Global Economic Prospects, 2008

- 10 World Bank Global Economic Prospects, 2008

- 11 Technology and Social Inclusion, Mark Warschauer, 2003

- 12 Eszter Hargittai et al, 2001

- 13 Idea Celluler Education-for-All Ad

- 14 McKinsey & Co, 2006

- 15 Leonard Waverman et al, 2005

- 16 The Economist, 2008

- 17 World Bank Global Economic Prospects, 2008

- 18 Jan Chipchase et al, Nokia Research, 2007

- 19 Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid, LIRNEasia, 2007

- 20 LIRNEasia Teleuse at the BOP Film, Part 1

- 21 LIRNEasia Teleuse at the BOP Film, Part 2

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Over the weekend, I have been going through research conducted by Nokia’s Jan Chipchase, Younghee Jung, Raphael Grignani and others and here’s a selection of their most interesting research on mobile phone usage at the bottom of the pyramid (more research to follow in another post).

Jan Chipchase on mobile phone usage amongst illiterate users at LIFT 2007 conference –

Jan Chipchase and Indru Tulusan on shared mobile phone usage –

- 3.3 billion people out of 6.5 billion people in the world have mobile phones. Another 1 billion people will have mobile phones within two years. Most of them will be from emerging Asia and Africa and will have limited literacy. In fact, out of the 774 million illiterate adults in the world, 270 million are in India (UNESCO Institute for Statistics)!

- Three types of literacies are relevant for mobile phone usage — textual literacy, numerical or arithmetic literacy and ‘proximate literacy’, the ability to rely on others who are either literate or at least sufficiently competent in using the device.

- Illiterate users rely on a variety of cues to navigate the world of text and numbers, including inferring meaning from shape, size, texture and scent and delegating tasks to others.

- Textually non-literate users can complete tasks requiring a degree of textual literacy, but these tasks typically take considerably longer to complete. Therefore, they tend to rely on rote learning and revert to the same default choices repeatedly.

- Non-literate mobile phone users typically know how to turn on the phone, receive calls and make local calls, but often struggle with features that require text editing, such as making long distance calls (by using prefixes), creating a contact, saving a text message, and creating a text message.

- Information relayed to non-literate users as part of a phone call is often partially conveyed or remembered because of their inability to write it down. Most users rely on paper based address books maintained by literate family members or acquaintances. Often, when phone calls are made using public phones, the operator maintains the phone book and even dials the number for the non-literate user.

- A non-literate user’s willingness to explore features on a mobile phone through trial and error is often limited because of the high perceived risk of factors such as: changing settings so that things no longer work; past experiences of things going wrong; deleting data that cannot be recovered; becoming lost and not being able to retrace steps; or physically breaking the phone.

- The challenge in designing mobile interfaces for illiterate users is to add context to the text. An icon-driven, voice-enabled or physical-digital hybrid interface may be part of the solution but its design is a non-trivial problem and its use may often be non-intuitive.

- Bringing personal, convenient, synchronous and asynchronous communication within the reach of textually non-literate users will require design innovations at three levels: on the phone; in the communications eco-system; and on the carrier network.

- For many new mobile phone users, the first mobile experience is either on a shared or a public phone. Sharing compromises the personal, convenient and synchronous nature of mobile communication and is driven by cost of ownership, not by preference. Therefore, sharing is a transition state that would eventually lead to full ownership. However, other factors like portable device identity — where a person can access all their personal ’stuff’ regardless of whose device they are using — may increase shared use over time.

- Shared mobile use practices include — Sente human ATMs, mediated communication, missed calls, shared pre-paid airtime, community address books, and step messaging (delivering a messages via shared mobile phone or kiosk where the message is delivered the last mile on foot).

- Sente is the informal practices of sending and receiving money through public phone kiosks. The sender buys a pre-paid top up card, calls up a phone kiosk operator near the receiver, who uses the credit to top up his own phone and passes the money to the receiver after taking a 10%-30% commission. This is the precursor to formal mobile banking services offered by mobile phone operators.

- Often, feature-rich premium devices are used by very poor users. Such sideways adoption may be driven by the perception of mobile phones as status symbols and the availability of used and remodeled mobile phones. However, phone ownership is not the same as use. If there are cheaper ways to communicate these will be used.

- In an increasingly transitory world, the cellphone is becoming the one fixed piece of our identity, especially for the poorest members of society. Having a call-back number is having a fixed identity point, which, inside of populations that are constantly on the move — displaced by war, floods, drought or faltering economies — can be immensely valuable both as a means of keeping in touch with home communities and as a business tool. The phone-number-as-identity effect is likely to increase as mobile phones become established at providing banking and other core services.

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Ethnographic research methods guide the design research phase for innovation as far as creating opportunities through which we can understand the present living and underlying motivations behind why people behave the way they do. But it often does not let us see beyond the barriers of the present living: people who are not using technology not because they do not need it but because they cannot afford it; people who do not have time or social network to introduce them to new tools. Through open studios, we wanted to lift these barriers and understand how people see the relevance of technology in their lives, sometimes for the future, sometimes in relation to what is lacking today. It is not a marketing tool, and it is not a tool to hunt ideas to implement in products directly. But it is a tool that supports our thinking and projection about the future. (Younghee Jung)

Despite what you might assume for a studio, the most valuable output of the Open Studio is not the designs, but in providing an alternative way for people to articulate their wants and needs - within the context of their community. (Jan Chipchase)

The 220 entries included a range of creative ideas that ranged from simple statements, to complex conceptual representations, to highly symbolic expressions of their needs and desires. Ideas represented through the entries can be broadly divided into four overlapping themes — device symbolism, functional enhancement, mobile convergence, and magical function –

- Device symbolism: Entries that used the device’s shape to symbolically represent the entrant’s preference, heritage, profession, and what they desire in the future through the shape of the device.

- Functional enhancement: Entries that focused on specific functions as solutions to problems or issues they are facing as individuals or communities.

- Mobile convergence: Entries that created attractive combinations of known functions on one mobile device, to enable easy access, especially in private contexts.

- Magical function: Entries that addressed the most important issue in their lives in mobile context, without any technical references or relevance to communication.

The underlying motivations represented through the entries included cost saving (combining device functionalities and enabling battery charging by solar energy), increasing convenience (combining device functionalities and wearing the mobile phone, often as a wrist watch), expressing identity, and enabling social change.

The conclusion reached by Jan and Younghee is at the center of my lowest common denominator design philosophy for MobiChange –

Their submissions highlighted that innovation in the context of these communities is not about newness of technology but relevance to the individual’s needs, usage contexts, and adaptability, especially for those who are exposed to the spread of technology or technology-driven products in a non-linear fashion compared to more developed markets.

For more details on the Nokia Open Studio see these two posts by Jan Chipchase and Younghee Jung.

Here is their paper and presentation on Nokia Open Studio –

Here is Younghee Jung’s talk at Lift 2008 Conference –

– and here is another video interview with her –

Here is a BusinessWeek slideshow on Nokia Open Studio.

Here’s a presentation by Younghee Jung and Jan Chipchase that locates Nokia Open Studio in the context of their work at Nokia Design Studio –

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TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb have written about a slide shared by Yahoo!’s Principal Research Scientist Elizabeth Churchill on geographical locations where Flickr users are more likely to post their photos with privacy settings (red) or use the default public setting (green). The sample set was 1 million Flickr users who self-reported their locations, in 2005.

Neither Michael Arrington nor Marshall Kirkpatrick share any details of the methodology behind the map, but a quick Google search led me to the presentation from which this slide seems to be taken: ‘Sharing Preferences and Privacy Cultures‘. The presentation itself is based on a paper by Elizabeth Churchill and Shyong K. Lam titled ‘The Social Web: Global Village or Private Cliques?’ The paper is behind a firewall but the presentation gives some more data about the research —

- More than 90% of users younger than 25 post their photos as public. In the 25 to 40 age group, public photo sharing behavior drops, almost in s straight line, to 80% and goes as low as 70% for users in their late 50s and early 60s.

- Public photo sharing behavior follows a S curve when mapped against the number of contacts: it first decreases between 0 to 10 contacts, then increases with the number of contacts to go beyond 90% for more than 30 odd contacts.

- In the world map itself, there are at least five gradations from green to red. It seems that pure red means that about 70% of the users share their photos publicly whereas green means that about 90% of the users share their photos publicly. Since no information is available for the methodology behind the world map, I can only conclude that users in America, Brazil and Russia have a higher tendency to share their photos publicly than users in India, China or Europe.

The conclusion that Indians are more concerned about online privacy than Brazilians and Americans further complicates my research on attitudes towards online privacy in BRIC countries. Another research by Synovate showed that Brazilians and Americans are more concerned about online privacy than Indians, whereas my own understanding is that both Brazilians and Indians are much less concerned about online privacy than Americans.

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I recently came across an amazing study done by ICT4D research organization LIRNEasia on Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Here are the key findings from the 2006 study amongst 8660 respondents (including 6605 SEC D and E respondents) in India, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand –

- At the BOP, access to phones (more than 90%) is much higher than ownership of phones (20% to 50%) due to heavy used of shared, borrowed and public phones.

- At the BOP, males are heavier users of mobile phones while females are heavier users of household landline phones.

- BOP users make an average of one call per day, mostly local, mostly 2-3 minutes long, mostly to stay in touch with family and friends.

- At the BOP, convenience, in terms of anytime accessibility, is the biggest driver in the purchase of both fixed and mobile phones. The ability to afford the initial cost (up to $50) of getting connected is the biggest reason for not buying a phone even though monthly charges are low (as low as $5).

- Most BOP phone owners (up to 70% in India) feel that owning a phone has improved their ability to earn or save.

- Only 35% of the BOP mobile phone owners in India use SMS (compared to 100% in Philippines) primarily because they don’t know how to use SMS (party due to low local language support) and the cost of an outgoing voice call is almost the same as the cost of a SMS.

- BOP mobile phone users adopt various cost-cutting techniques including making missed calls, using the mobile phone exclusively for incoming calls, making only mobile-to-mobile calls and making calls at off-peak hours.

- More than 95% of the BOP mobile phone users have pre-paid connections to control costs and avoid documentation. Most of them do infrequent top-ups once in a month or even longer (>90% in India).

- More than half of the BOP non-owners want to buy a phone in the next 2 years. Almost a third of them (skewed towards female and rural users) want to buy a fixed connection. Most of the prospective BOP phone users have incomes of less than $150 per month.

- Finally, almost 70% of the BOP respondents in India hadn’t heard of the internet yet in 2006 (wow!).

Here is a three part presentation on the findings — 1, 2, 3 — and here is a two part video report on the study — 1, 2 —

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The story on using mobile innovations for development in Africa has been unfolding for a while now, but it has become even more prominent since the Surprising Africa special at the Picnic 2008 conference in Amsterdam and the MobileActive 2008 conference in Johannesburg.

Here’s what some of the people who are writing the story on mobile-based social innovation in Africa have to say about it.

Ethan Zuckerman from Golbal Voices –

If Africa is surprising, then you’re not paying enough attention.

Jonathan Gosier from AppAfrica (link) —

For social entrepreneurs and investors, the innovation occurring here is a huge sign of progress that could potentially change the continent’s world standing forever. The most exciting aspect for me, however, is the decreased reliance on developmental aid and foreign groups to provide these solutions. The number of African developers who are beginning to create applications that offer solutions for their own communities is increasing and that, more than anything else, will shape the future of Africa.

Eric Hersman from Ushahidi (link/ slides) –

Here’s one more compelling thought. The challenges brought about by bad governance, poverty, low bandwidth (all the negative things you associate with Africa) also provide an incredible opportunity. The developers who are coming up with solutions in the continent, the ones who are writing software or hacking hardware, are creating for some of the harshest environments and use-cases in the world. If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.

Lowest common denominator design is at the core of MobiChange — it doesn’t work if it doesn’t work for everybody, everywhere — and here is a list of African mobile for development innovations I often turn towards for inspiration —

- Mobile Payments: MPESA (kenya), Wizzit (South Africa), Celpay (Zambia)

- Citizen Journalism: Africa News, Ushahidi (Kenya and South Africa), Sokwanele (Zimbabwe), Afrigator, Mzalendo (Kenya).

- Consumer Activism: mPedigree (Ghana).

- Access: WinAfrique (Kenya), Feedelix (Ethiopia), EthioBlog (Ethiopia), mobile phones on bicycles and wheelchairs, mobile charging stations.

- Agriculture: TradeNet (West Africa), Manobi (Senegal).

- Health: TxtAlert, SocialTxt and Mobilisr by Praekelt Foundation (South Africa)

Also See: Jonathan Gosier (1, 2, 3), Jason Harris (1, 2), Ethan Zuckerman, Amy Smith, Paul Polak, Ben Turner.

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In my earlier post on the recently published Universal McCann study, I had written about how we use different communication channels to stay in touch with our contacts.

Perhaps the most important insight in the Universal McCaan study is that we use the internet for expanding our network of contacts but use the mobile phone to maintain our current network.

Here’s another interesting insight from the Universal McCann report: we use social networks for making new friends and personal blogs for socializing with friends –

In the previous post, we found that Brazilians and the Indians are amongst the most social online whereas the Americans are amongst the least social. The same trend can be seen here.

While differences in culture partly explain this significant difference in online social behavior, self-selection is also part of the explanation. Given the low penetration of the internet in Brazil and India, social media usage in these countries suffers from a serious early adopter bias.

But, let’s return to the idea that we use social networks for making new friends and personal blogs for socializing with friends. The idea presumes that our social network profile is more public than our personal blog, and I think that it’s indeed the case for most of us. I’m sure that many active social network users who have hundreds of friends on Facebook or Orkut have personal blogs that are rarely updated and read only by a few close friends and family members.

However, many of us have built substantial readerships for our blogs and use them as much for broadcasting as for socializing. For us, the opposite is likely to hold true. We meet new readers through the blog, interact with them via the comment section, e-mail or internet messenger, become friends with them, and then add them as a friend on Facebook or Orkut. I think that Twitter and FriendFeed are more similar to blogs than social networks on the broadcasting/ socializing continuum, in the sense that they are also hybrids, used both for broadcasting and socializing.

What’s the directionality for you? Do you make new social network friends via your blog or do your social network friends become readers for your blog? Do share your experiences in the comments section.

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Atanu Dey on why electricity is the bottleneck for mobile usage in rural India –

We don’t usually associate telecommunications with power. But cellular towers don’t work on love and fresh air (and fresh air is not something that you can take for granted, anyway.) They require power and in areas where the grid is unreliable, you have to spend fairly large sums on diesel generator sets. That, among others, is a major problem in rural India. The cost of energy accounts for a third of the operating costs of a cellular network, I am told. Higher costs means higher prices. So what’s to be done.

I am a firm believer in the market. The market figures out a solution. Recently I came across a firm that has developed cellular technology that is miserly in the use of electricity. It does not require grid and can do without diesel generator sets. It is VNL, a Swedish Indian company. As they claim, “VNL’s WorldGSM™ is the industry’s first microtelecom solution; a complete re-engineering of GSM for the billions of low-income, rural users.”

As you know by now, I’m a big believer in the idea of of transforming the macro into the micro and microtelecom sounds more exciting than anything else I have heard of late.

By the way, mobile penetration in rural India is growing fast. According to TRAI, at the end of June 2008, the rural wireless subscriber base in India was 71 million, or 25% of the 287 million mobile subscribers in India. Even more importantly, out of the 25.8 million new mobile subscribers in April to June, 8.55 million, or more than 30%, were rural subscribers.

Clearly, mobile penetration in rural India is increasing and initiatives like microtelecom will only enable the process.

Social Media Enthusiast | The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption | GU-ISD Yahoo! Fellow in International Values & Communications Technologies | Poet | More About Me

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I had earlier used data from the Wave 3 of the Power of the People Social Media Tracker by Universal McCann to do a comparative analysis of social media usage in BRIC countries.

Now Universal McCann has published some more findings from the same study in another report titled When did we start trusting strangers? How the internet turned us all into influencers. The report is a treasure trove of interesting findings on how digital media is changing how we look at relationships and influence and I’m sure that I’ll return to it often in subsequent posts.

However, in this post, I want to focus on Universal Mccann’s findings on how we stay in touch with our personal contacts –

The evolution of the web as a social platform and primary communication channel has had a dramatic impact on the scale and nature of our friendship networks. Figure 8 shows the global average number of friends and personal acquaintances we maintain via different forms of communication including face to face, digital and letters.

The amazing truth is that the web has massively expanded the size of our social platforms and virtualised a large proportion of our daily contact. Today, although we still maintain an average of 35 friendships face to face, it is rapidly being equalled by email with an average of 32, social networks with 30 and Instant Messenger with 29.

Interestingly these all rank above SMS or phone calls, which shows that PC based internet is for expanding networks, while mobile is for maintaining current ones.

The nature of friendship is changing from voice to text and written word. This is a significant change in the ability to influence and share opinions as it’s much easier to do in text – communication is more frequent and can include additional information like links, videos and photos.

It’s important that we keep four clarifications in mind as we think about these numbers –

- These are the average number of people the respondents stay in touch with regularly in their personal life through each communication channel. These are not the number of people in their phone- or computer-based contact list, which is likely to be much higher.

- There is likely to be a large overlap between the number of people the respondents stays in touch with using different communications channel. So, the sum of these numbers is the number of total contact points and not the number of contacts itself.

- “Staying in touch” can mean different things in different cultures and these numbers do not capture the frequency of use of these communication channels.

- These numbers are based on responses from active internet users in the 16-54 age group, who aren’t representative of the overall population, especially in the BRIC countries who have very low internet penetrations.

While the worldwide figures are interesting in themselves, the country-wise comparisons are even more illuminating.

At the overall level, the Indians are the most social with 292 contact points, followed by the Brazilians at 260 contact points and the Chinese at 234 contact points. The world average is 194 contact points while Americans are rather asocial at 110 contact points.

Face-to-face, the Indians (42 contacts) and the Brazilians (38 contacts) are very social, the Chinese not so (28 contacts) and the Americans even less so (20 contacts).

On social networks, the Brazilians (52 contacts) and the Indians (43 contacts) are also hyper-social, which probably connects with the Brazilian/ Indian obsession with the rather open social network Orkut. The Americans, who are more mindful of online privacy, prefer the more controlled environment of Facebook and stay in touch with only 17 contacts.

Both the Indians (with 36 contacts) and the Chinese (with 32 contacts) like to stay in touch with SMS, while both the Brazilians and the Chinese (with 49 contacts each) extensively use instant messengers to stay in touch with friends.

The Indians, in fact, are truly channel agnostic and heavily use the phone (45 contacts) and letters (24 contacts) to stay in touch with personal contacts.

Finally, the Chinese have truly embraced personal blogs and use it to stay in touch with as many as 26 contacts, almost the same as the 28 face-to-face contacts.

I have always thought of myself as an introvert, but I regularly (that is, at least once a month) stay in touch with a surprisingly large number of friends — 50+ face to face, 50+ by e-mail, at least 100+ by social networks, less than 5 by instant messenger, 20+ by phone, 20+ by test message, 20+ by personal blog and none by letters, totaling to at least 250-300 contact points.

What about you? What is your preferred communication channel? What is the number of your contact points?

Social Media Enthusiast | The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption | GU-ISD Yahoo! Fellow in International Values & Communications Technologies | Poet | More About Me

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