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University of Wisconsin–Madison
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty

Tag: Cellular phones

Telecommunications in Developing Nations

For the poor, cellphones can offer lifeline, By Cecilia Kang, September 8, 2010, Washington Post: “For the world’s poorest, cellphone technology carries opportunity, aid groups say, as text messages and other mobile applications have created a new platform to reach the most remote farms and crowded urban slums of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Grameen Foundation, a Washington-based group known for helping women with the smallest of business loans, has two dozen people in a technology lab here developing mobile Internet applications to help spread its microfinance model. It’s warning farmers in Uganda about banana crop rot through text messages and collecting data on spreadsheet applications on smartphones…”

Millennium Development Goals

  • UN reveals global disparity in broadband access, By Jonathan Fildes, September 2, 2010, BBC News: “The Central African Republic is the most expensive place to get a fixed broadband connection, costing nearly 40 times the average monthly income there. Macao in China is the cheapest, costing 0.3% of the average monthly income. Niger becomes the most expensive place to access communication technologies, when landlines and mobiles are also taken into account. ‘Access to broadband in an affordable manner is our greatest challenge,’ Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), told BBC News. The statistics were released ahead of the UN 2010 Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York on 19 September…”
  • World leaders urged to act on poverty, By Danny Rose, September 1, 2010, Sydney Morning Herald: “The world’s aid and charity organisations have resolved to again urge governments to pump billions of dollars into the global fight against poverty. Any suggestion that they lacked the resources to do so was a ‘nonsense’, the final day of the United Nations DPI/NGO (Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental Organisation) Conference was told on Wednesday. A fraction of the world’s military spending would fund the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), said Professor Phil Batterham, convenor of the three-day conference in Melbourne. Around 1600 delegates represented more than 350 Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) at the conference…”
  • Some have progress at their fingertips, but for others pain and poverty linger, August 28, 2010, The Age: “A street beggar’s dirty hand is drawn to his mouth in the universal sign for hunger. A busy foreigner bustles past and shrugs, indicating he does not have any local coins. ‘I take SMS,’ calls the beggar. This truly is the digital economy. While Melburnians struggle to work out how to use a myki card, Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, buzzes on a banking system based on short messages sent from mobile phones. Known as m-pesa – ‘pesa’ is Swahili for money – the mobile service works on a debit and credit principle. A vendor nominates a price, the buyer sends a text message to transfer funds between accounts. Should a person need hard currency, booths are dotted around the country so people can make withdrawals. The service is booming. Almost 12 million Kenyans used m-pesa in the past year, sending $A462 million in small transactions. Ready access to cheap mobile phones, even for the poor, gives the mobile money system many advantages over a traditional cash-based economy. Security is one thing – for Kenya’s many slum dwellers, finding a safe place to stash savings is tricky…”

Lifeline Cellular Phone Program

Federal program buys cell phones for the poor, By Scott Canon, July 30, 2010, Kansas City Star: “A cell phone in every pocket. And for growing numbers, it’s free. ‘It’s a sign of the times,’ said Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and author of ‘The Poverty of ‘The Poverty Rate.” ‘When does a luxury become an absolute bare necessity?’ Roughly one in 10 American households qualifies for a direct phone subsidy. In a fast-growing number of states, including Missouri, that equates to a free cell phone. It is both news and history – the extension of longstanding telephone subsidies for the poor, and cell carriers taking advantage of virtually guaranteed profits. While cell companies see the federal Lifeline program as a way to scoop up hundreds of millions of dollars in business, the move has raised questions about the way Americans subsidize each other’s phone service. More than 2 million poor people have been given free handsets and prepaid cell service – albeit on the simplest of phones, often with barely an hour’s talk time per month – as wireless carriers scramble for a toehold with a new class of customers…”