Mobile phones and the digital divide

Whether you're building an application for the 3G iPhone in the United States or trying to figure out how to deliver health information via SMS (Short Message Service) to a rural community in Botswana, the mobile space is diverse and exciting in equal measure. It touches on more fields than you could throw a phone at: anthropology, appropriate technology, electronics, programming, telecommunications, geography, literacy, gender and poverty to name a few. It's this diversity that makes it so exciting. Yet, at the same time, it's this same diversity that presents us with many of our greatest challenges. In many ways, the mobile world -- particularly in the ICT4D (ICT for Development) field -- is fragmented and often misunderstood.

There are many reasons for this, but for now, I'm going to concentrate on one important aspect: mobile phones and the digital divide.

While developed markets get excited by the iPhone, N95, BlackBerry, 3G, WiMax and Android, in developing countries, most excitement centers around the proliferation of mobile phones -- any phones -- into poorer rural, communication-starved areas and their potential to help close the digital divide. Handset giants such as Nokia and Motorola believe that mobile devices will "close the digital divide in a way the PC never could." Industry bodies such as the GSM Association run their own "Bridging the Digital Divide" initiative, and international development agencies such as USAID pump hundreds of millions of dollars into economic, health and educational initiatives based around mobile technology. With so many big names involved, what could possibly go wrong?

To answer this, I think we need to go back to basics and ask what we really mean when we talk about mobiles helping close the digital divide. Clearly, mobile phones are relatively cheap (when compared to personal or laptop computers, anyway). They are small and portable, have good battery life, provide instant voice communications, have SMS functionality at the very least, and they have the potential to provide access to the Internet. What's more, hundreds of millions of some of the poorest members of society either own one or have access to one. No other two-way communications technology comes close. (Radio, which is a hugely relevant and influential channel, is obviously only one-way).

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