Affordable mobile phone

In the 21st century, communication has become an integral part of people's life in some part of the world. on the other hand there are some parts who does not have even basic telephone. India is a good example for this poor telecome infrastructure. It is astonishing to see that a country whose scientist has demonstrated wireless transmission of radio waves (ironically Marconi got Nobel Prize for the same work) in 1895 in Calcutta, India, does not have even a single telephone per household, forget about per person. This time india has arround 25 million phones out of a population of more than 1000 millions and more than 180 million houses. On other hand there are countries like Italy that has one mobile phone per person.This shows there is some serious problem. Either people of india dont like to communicate or they dont feel comfortable with the idea of having mobile phone. In any case it can not be the first thing. Everyone likes to communicate as often as possible to his/her dear ones. What i understand with my practicle experience is that there is no mobile phone and service provider that is affordable to big population living in india.When we look into developed countries, we find that almost everyone who owns a mobile phone spends at least 30 dollors per month. But 30 dollors per month is a very small fraction of the monthly salary people get in developed countries. It is just 2 or 3 percent of the salary. So nobody minds to spend this much money. When we look into india, people living in village earn someting like 20-30 dollors per months. I am sure these people can spend even 5 percent of their monthy salary on communication, that is obviously higher than their counterparts living in the developed world. This amount comes out to be arround $1 per month. But unfortunately no one is providing so cheap (afordable) service in India. There are no fixed telephone lines in small villages and now it is impossible to imagine that some company or government is going to put costly copper wires or even fiber optics to provide this cheap service.So what should be done with this arround 20% population of the world? It is sure there salaries are not going to be higher in near future, so should be forget them and continue to work for the worlds that has power to buy costly things. Answer is NO. But it is not possible with this conventional means. There are some research labs those are working to provide cheap and affordable mobile telephony.But even in this case they are copying and trying to modify the idea of having mobile phone from developed world. I think that this mobile phone is not the solution for this problem. There has to be something else that i can not say how it will look and work, but definitely it is not this mobile phone that will work. How can it be imagined that people earning 20-30 dollors per month can buy a mobile phone for 70-80 dollors? This is the first cost that is too big and after that service provider charge per month.There are almost all the big multinational telecome companies operating in India. But no one ever think that they are not providing afordable mobile phone. The problem comes from the basic management structure they have. These companies operate in India and hire local people for their management, but unfortunately they miss one thing here. They always hire the best people, graduated from good universities, who speak fluent english and local languages. None of the company understand that these good people are from that section of Indian society that is very rich. These rich people have millions and billions of rupeese in their bank balance. These best educated managers and executives think the same way as these multinational companies think. These small fraction of indian society are those whose family income is a few hundred thousand dollors per year. They will never suggest that a mobile phone of 70-80 euro is costly because for them it is very cheap. All these multinational companies are pushing new products and with new generation technologies. They provide 5 games in the mobile phone, reminder, and many other functionalities, but unfortunately they dont know that noone ever uses them. People dont use because of two reasons, first they are not interested and second they dont know how to use. Is there any point of providing such functionalities that no one ever use and then charging them for these useless services and making product costly?Here i have suggested some solution for making mobile phone cheap by not providing services, people dont use. There are many other solutions to make it even cheaper, these solutions will change the mobile telephony. But ofcourse people need to think in this direction. I have many other ideas, but those can be discussed face to face only because those are very unconventional solutions and none can understand just by reading.

last updated: 29th jan, 2004