 ID: 121711
Added: 2008-03-07 14:01
Modified: 2008-03-07 15:31
Refreshed: 2010-07-28 22:55
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| New from Panos: The Real Challenge of Telecoms in Africa |
News 3 of 8
In most of rural Africa, there is still only one telephone for every thousand people. While it is true that the number of phones in Africa has risen enormously in the past decade, especially since liberalisation, most of the new telephones are mobiles, and they are mostly in cities. For rural people, buying and using a mobile phone can be a very expensive business. So as the ITU TELECOMS Africa conference gets underway in Cairo this week, a new report from Panos questions whether mobile services can become cheap enough to meet rural needs, whether new technologies are making traditional fixed-line infrastructures obsolete, and whether the level of rural phone use will ever be enough to provide a profitable market for private providers or will substantial subsidy be needed to ensure rural services? The new Panos Report, 'Completing the Revolution - the Challenge of Rural Telephony in Africa', is now available online. The research behind this report was partly funded through the ICT R&D Small Grants programme of Acacia and Connectivity Africa, the two Africa region ICT4D programmes of the International Development Research Centre. To read this and other Panos research, click on http://www.panos.org.uk/global/program_news.asp?ID=1002
2004-05
News 3 of 8
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