Communications - April 2009

bottom-billion citizens are subscribers (up from approximately 2% at the start of the century) ⁶ but, as with the Internet, the effective penetration—those who could access a cellphone from neighbors, relatives, or local call sellers if necessary—is higher; likely more than half the population.

illustration by stuart braDforD

Subscriber growth rates are also high—50% per year compared to less than 20% in Europe—and sometimes highest for the most-afflicted countries. Three examples of the worst of insecurity and instability in the bottom billion— Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia—have high investments and an average 100% annual growth rate. ⁷ Those rates are likely to sustain: in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, by 2012, it is estimated 90% of the population will be within cellphone coverage, up from 60% today. ³

We are still a long way from North American rates of IT usage but it is well past time to move from talking about vague future possibilities and begin talking about actual current priorities.

The first priority should be engagement. I wonder how many Communi-

cations readers are working on an informatics project in a bottom-billion country. It is likely not a large number, because we tend to work where the money is rather than where the problems are.

In terms of IT, the three key priorities are mobiles, mobiles, and mobiles. As indicated earlier in this column, cellphones are now reaching far down into the bottom billion. At present, development solutions will need to be based around voice and text. But other possibilities are rapidly opening up.

One set of these possible solutions involves the integration of mobiles with other IT. This scenario could involve radio and television, converting these high-penetration but broadcast-only media into much more interactive forms, as currently being achieved in the growing number of “community radio” projects. Or we can think of integrating phones with telecenters and kiosks. Pilot projects already under way suggest this can multiply the impact of Web access many times. ⁴

How will the Web and Internet reach the bottom billion? The GSM Associa-

tion estimates that 80% of Internet delivery will occur through mobile devices. ³However, mobiles are not the only way forward. WiMAX-plus-netbook systems can offer high-quality, low-cost Internet access. Even more intriguing is the potential use of “white space”: the unused parts of the analog television broadcast spectrum. For the bottom billion, it will be many years before digital switchover and release of analog spectrum space, but new technology could be developed to identify and use existing white space spectrum gaps. ¹This reallocation of spectrum space could offer wide-reach-ing broadband Internet service at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.

In all these areas, though, we need more, better, and less expensive technological innovations that focus on the particular conditions and resource constraints of bottom-billion customers.