Poor, yes but smart business talkers

Md Asraful Islam, a farmer of Gohangachhi village of Dinajpur Sadar upazila, recalls life before cell phones with no fondness. He had to travel for his seeds, to the market and for meetings with local officials on policies and pesticide use.
It was slow and unpredictable. “Before using a cell phone, I had to move everywhere,” he says. “It was time-consuming.”
It was also costly. But the phone reduced both travel time and costs. And, he says, he is more than happy to pay Tk 200-300 each month.
Low-income customers in Bangladesh lead the region in the mobile phone use for business, according to a survey of more then 10,000 users in six countries by the Sri Lanka-based research company LIRNEasia.
Poor Bangladeshis make business calls 72 percent of the time on any given day. The figure for India is just 42 percent, and for Pakistan just 31 percent. The survey data underlying the study date to late 2008, but the study results are new.
Emerging markets contain the largest numbers of poor people but are leading global mobile growth. Widespread network coverage and healthy telco competition underlie the finding, said a senior official of the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh.
“This study proves that general people use mobile phone to fuel the economic engine of Bangladesh,” said Abu Saeed Khan, the AMTOB secretary general. “Bangladesh is the only country in this group that has achieved nearly 100 percent network coverage.”
The survey was carried out by with the aid of a grant from the Canada’s International Development Research Centre, the UK’s Department for International Development and by Norway’s Telenor Research & Development Centre Sdn Bhd.
Bangladesh cell phone service was rolled out without government aid, noted Khan. But AMTOB members resent the government now forcing it to subsidise SIMs and, perhaps soon, to also contribute to a social fund.

Courtesy of The Daily Star