BOP Shared Mobile Access (WRI)

Another innovative business model—shared access, in which an entrepreneur
with a phone provides pay-per-use access to a community—has
extended the social and economic impact of mobile phones beyond the
subscriber base.

In South Africa more than half the traffic on Vodacom’s
mobile network in 2004 came not from its 8 million subscribers but from
4,400 entrepreneur-owned phone shops where customers rent access to
phones by the minute.

In Bangladesh, Grameen Telecom’s village phone
entrepreneurs now serve 80,000 rural villages, generating more than
US$100 in monthly revenue per phone by aggregating the demand of
(and providing service to) entire villages (Cohen 2001).

[Read the full report here]