Mobile Phones Provide Jobs in Rural Areas

Monday, September 24, 2007

The mobile phone is enabling people at the bottom of the pyramid to widen their markets.

For instance, it provides vendors timely information about crowd gatherings, a potential market. It comes in handy for the watermelon vendor during the nine months of off-season when he can find work as a repairman.

Indeed, thousands of artisans are finding that the mobile connects them to their markets and even opens new markets for them.

These and other benefits of mobile phone in rural areas were the focus in the discussion at the Telecom CEO Conclave organised by Bharat Exhibitions on Friday in Delhi.

Video would be the most popular and relevant application in the rural telecom scenario, and mobile service providers must go for multiple uses of the mobile based on a combination of voice and video, and not so much data, asserted leading telecom executives at the conclave.

“In the rural context, it would be voice messaging, not SMS, that would be popular,” said K Sridhara, member of Technology, DOT, Ministry of Communications & IT. He rejected the contention that rural users are too poor to pay for mobile services, quoting his own observations in remote areas.

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Source: Tech2 (link opens in a new window)