Voice and Data carries a detailed article on LIRNEasia’s teleuse research findings, including the use of telephony and remittance patterns among migrants in the study. The article highlight the gender difference in telecom ownership and use that still exists among the South Asian countries studied. The article goes on to argue that while “entertainment has a stronghold in telecom use”, a lack of interesting content and limited needs, reduces the chances of uptake and consumption among the BOP. Read the full article here. Unlike in Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and the Philippines, where female users have already taken a proactive lead, in South Asian countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, clear gender differences still exist and this in turn impacts several elements of telecom usage like phone sharing, spatial elements of phone use, mobile adoption, ownership and perceptions around benefits.
As the media dissemination phase of the teleuse@BOP 3 study draws to a close, we were pleased to see the qualitative results showcased in a long article in the Times of India, perhaps one of the most prestigious among the high-quality media of India. Rural and low-income consumer segments are attracting immense interest as they are expected to contribute to the next wave of growth in India, particularly for telecom products and services. Many industry experts believe that the next billion telecom subscribers will come from the BOP. Telecom adoption at the BOP highlights the role of telecom in enhancing household income and transforming personal identity by increasing accessibility and hence, credibility. Telecom adoption is also seen to impact their social and professional network coordination by strengthening family ties and increasing business coordination by overcoming challenges posed by location and context.
Reading an article by Araba Sey on a small-sample study of teleuse among non-owners in Ghana in a special issue of info, edited by two colleagues in LIRNE.NET, I was surprised to see no references whatsoever to our work. We who are at edge of the global academic system had excuses, but really, after Scholar.Google, no one has excuses. Further, I was told that Araba had been at a talk given by Helani Galpaya at USC Annenberg School in October 2007 and had been given an entire set of teleuse@BOP2 findings, which makes the omission even more saddening.
The last burst of dissemination for the teleuse@BOP3 results is yielding good results, this time with an agency story about more BOP homes in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan having phones than radios, a story we had blogged about some time back. Phones are catching up with TVs, and the number of phones being used by ‘bottom of the pyramid’ households have already outpaced the number of radios and computers in South Asia, researchers have said. LIRNEasia, a Sri Lanka-based Asia-Pacific information and communication technology (ICT) policy and regulation capacity-building organisation, said in India a hundred bottom of the pyramid (BOP) households now had 50 TVs, 38 phones, 28 radios and one computer. Radio has been displaced from its No.2 position after television in India.
Findings on public phone use from the Teleuse@BOP3 study have been published in the Indian media. An excerpt of one, published by Yahoo, India follows: A new study says public telephones are the most frequently used method of making calls by Indian women at the bottom of the social pyramid compared to other South Asian nations like Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Thailand. Indian men at the bottom of the pyramid, on the other hand, rely more on their mobiles, the study said. Women can walk into a phone booth at any time to connect to friends and families without the fear of being harassed, spied upon or discriminated against in terms of gender. Home phones, said the study, exposed the women to being censured.
LIRNEasia‘s recent research on ICT use and remittances among migrant workers was released in Dhaka on 28 June 2009. The study of over 1,500 domestic and overseas migrant workers in six Asian countries (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Sri Lanka) has yielded some interesting insights in Bangladesh, with important policy implications. Demand for communication among Bangaldeshi migrants surveyed was particularly high compared to the other countries surveyed; a significant number of overseas migrants even used the Internet to call home. Bangladeshi migrants were sending home around half of their salaries on average, mostly through banks, and hand-carried in cash. Mobiles play a key role in coordinating remittances; a small number of overseas migrants were even sending money home through their mobiles.
Tharoor recalled the infamous words of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s communications minister in the 1970s, C.M. Stephen. In response to questions decrying the rampant telephone breakdowns in the country, the minister declared in Parliament that telephones were a luxury, not a right. He added that ‘any Indian who was not satisfied with his telephone service could return his phone’ — since there was an eight-year waiting list of people seeking this supposedly inadequate product.
Teleuse@BOP3, LIRNEasia’s six country study has shown that between 2006 and 2008 there has been significant uptake of mobiles by the BOP in emerging Asia. Access to computers on the other hand (see here for numbers) in these countries at the BOP is minimal. Together with the increasing capabilities of mobiles to deliver an array of services, which essentially boil down to what you can do on the Internet (information publication and retrieval, transactions, etc) this means that much of the BOP will have their first Internet experience through a mobile. The current issue of Nokia’s Expanding Horizons quarterly magazine highlights LIRNEasia’s Teleuse@BOP3 study findings from India, illustrating this point. Mobiles are now the most common form of communication, pushing public phones into second place… The rapid evolution of the mobile into a multi-purpose communications and knowledge tool combined with its fast adoption by the BOP, means they and the majority of people in the developing world are likely to have their first Internet experience via a mobile.
Until recently, I believed, with Richard Heeks quoted below, that radio is found in more homes (at the BOP or all) than phones and TVs. Survey data from the BOP at three countries that account for the world’s greatest concentration of poor people (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) tell a story that contradicts the common wisdom. In India, 58% of BOP households have TVs, while only 32% have radios. And some kind of phone in the household? 45%!
We’ve always wondered how new smart mobile phones, the technological marvels they are, go for so cheap. According to the teleuse@BOP3 study, the average price paid for a new phone by people in SEC groups D and E in Pakistan is USD 47 (down from USD 77 in 2006). The price of a second-hand phone is USD 27 (down from USD 45 in 2006). Counterfeit phones (HiPhone, instead of iPhone) may be part of the answer: Although shanzhai phones have only been around a few years, they already account for more than 20 percent of sales in China, which is the world’s biggest mobile phone market, according to the research firm Gartner. They are also being illegally exported to Russia, India, the Middle East, Europe, even the United States.
An AFP story published today talks about the Indian boom in mobile connections, despite all round economic gloom: a record 15m new connections were added in India in January 2009 according to the article. India’s “mobile revolution” is still mainly seen in the cities, but the real prize for phone companies is the vast rural market, where nearly 70 percent of the 1.1-billion-strong population live, analysts say. By the end of January, 34.5 percent of the population owned a telephone, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said.
A recent report of the same title, published by Vodafone and ICRIER, India, reveal that Indian states with high mobile penetration can be expected to grow faster than those states with lower mobile penetration rates, namely, 1.2% points for every 10% increase in the penetration rate. The research also highlights the role of mobile along with complementary skills and other infrastructure, for the full realization of benefits of access to communications in agriculture and among SMEs. Importantly, telecommunications cannot be seen in isolation from other parts of the development process. In urban slums, the research reveals the importance of network effects, i.
This episode of The Interview features an interview with Executive Director, Rohan Samarajiva on telecom regulations, disaster mitigation, preparedness and early warning, mobile phone usage at the BOP and a number of other technology related issues. The Interview – Rohan Samarajiva from CPA on Vimeo.
The motto of any typical bureaucrat is “First my convenience!”. How can one expect Sri Lankan types to be different? In late 1980s, when motor cyclists were found responsible for few key assassinations, the Police reacted first by banning helmets (before that it was compulsory) and then by prohibiting pillion riders. Why this nuisance?
LIRNEasia’s Executive Director will present a paper on the gendered aspects of telecom use at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) in emerging Asia, at the 58th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), ‘Communicating for Social Impact’ in Montreal, Canada, on 26 May 2008. The paper ‘Who’s got the phone? The gendered use of telephones at the bottom of the pyramid’ explores the so called gender ‘divide’ in telecom access at the BOP in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Thailand, finding that that a significant gender divide in access to telephones exists in Pakistan and India , to a lesser extent in Sri Lanka , but is absent in the Philippines and Thailand. The authors argue that perhaps as penetration levels increase, overall the gender divide may reduce, although in some cases like Pakistan, culture will override. The paper also looks at difference is usage patterns between men and women at the BOP, and challenges some of the findings of studies which claim that women’s and men’s use is fundamentally different.
LIRNEasia’s Executive Director will speak at the International Conference on Information, Communication and New Media & the First Annual Convention of the Information and Communication Association of Taiwan, being held in Taipei on 17 May 2008. His presentaiton, Asia at the leading edge of communication and new media developments? can be downloaded by clicking on the link.