Beginnings and end-games
There was a big BusinessWeek story recently about the enormous contributions cell phones can make in developing countries — and particularly in Africa.
‘Mobile technology has brought many fruits, and no bad things,’ insists Isaac Mahenia, a schoolteacher and part-time farmer in Muruguru. Abraham Maragua. . .agrees that life is finally getting better in the village, and that mobile phones are part of the change.
I thought this was a pretty strong and interesting story, and I took it at face value.
But other people whose opinions I respect saw this differently - as an advertisement for the mobile phone industry in Africa. And, even more strongly, as an excuse for developed nations to limit their investment in development. Wireless doesn’t help with access to the internet unless there are fiber connections (somewhere) to connect to, and without basic infrastructure and a certain stability those fiber or copper connections won’t be safe. Infrastructure like this (fiber, copper, water, electricity) requires longterm investment. Wireless isn’t a substitute for all of that. Subscribers will be sharing scarce connections to the internet, and in the end the country won’t make all that much progress. But wireless carriers will indeed do well.
Someone sent me a second story that relates to this one. It’s from newspapers in California decrying the unbelievable lobbying strength of the carriers there. The headline tells the story: “Activists Say Industry Money Silences Pro-Consumer Bills.”
The industry doesn’t want people to pay pro-rated termination fees, arguing that high set fees subsidize the free-ish cellphones that consumers enjoy. So switching is hard. The industry doesn’t want to allow unlocked phones (evidenced yet again by Verizon’s lawsuit last week). The industry doesn’t want clear disclosures about taxes and fees associated with phone bills.
At the same time, lots of cell-phone-company money goes to Republicans in California, and “[o]f the $7.2 million handed out by telecom companies with cell phone divisions since 2005, more than $600,000 has gone to the California Democratic Party.” So bills that might require consumer-friendly behavior in California are dying.
These two stories go together, in a sense. In the first, new, developing-world consumers are benefiting from cellphones and aren’t aware that it isn’t a good idea to skip infrastructural steps — and the wireless carriers are doing well. In the second, “old,” developed-world consumers are benefiting from cellphones and aren’t aware of how locked-in they are to high termination fees and locked-up equipment — and the wireless carriers are doing well. No conventional means will have much effect on any of this.