This section features reports of the research conducted under the WDR umbrella by research centres around the globe.
Mobile Opportunities Research Results Print E-mail
Sunday, 25 November 2007

DIRSIDIRSI has released a regional overview and six national reports for its project, Mobile Opportunities: Poverty and Telephony Access in Latin America and the Caribbean. The study gathered information about the strategies to access and use mobile telephony in contexts of poverty and social exclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean. Seven national surveys were undertaken for Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru and Trinidad and Tobago. The analysis of the data will help form policy recommendations for each country. Contrasting the information from the different country case studies provides a regional panorama of the growing penetration and use of mobile telephony at the bottom of the pyramid.

Given the importance of mobile telephony access to the poor, DIRSI’s 2007 main project seeks to understand the strategies employed by the poor to access and use mobile telephony services, and identify the major market and regulatory barriers to increased penetration and usage as well as business opportunities to serve underprivileged users.

Access to communication services and telephony in particular, has long been recognized as an important development input. In Latin America and the Caribbean the level of penetration has grown exponentially in the past years, driven to a significant degree by mobile services. Access to telephony in the region is largely based on usage strategies around mobile telephony, particularly for the poor who for various reasons typically have limited access to traditional fixed services.
 
Nonetheless the debate about universal access, and more generally about how improved communications could help alleviate poverty in the region, continues to be focused around fixed telephony and related services (e.g., switched or xDSL Internet access). This not only ignores the realities of how the poor communicate but also risks misallocating public resources through the funding of access programs of little relevance to those that most need improved access to basic communication services.
 
The main goal of this research project is to understand the strategies employed by the poor in Latin America and the Caribbean to access and use mobile telephony services, and identify the major market and regulatory barriers to increased penetration and usage as well as business opportunities for the "bottom of the pyramid" users. We also seek to understand how mobile telephony access contributes to social and economic development- what we call mobile opportunities. A set of recommendations for policymakers and key stakeholders to help remove major access barriers, including identification of best-practice solutions to delivering mobile services to the "bottom of the pyramid" users, is a key project deliverable.

Background DIRSI research for the Mobile Opportunities project identified the importance of mobile access to the poor, its process of growth as well as a series of regulatory and market barriers for increased mobile telephony access and use by the poor. Yet empirical studies of the social and economic implications of mobile use in the region based on demand analysis are rare. To understand the role of ICTs in economic development, and in particular of mobile telephony services,  we need to explore if and how mobile phones are useful to address the multiple development obstacles faced by the poor in urban and rural areas. A key goal is to identify common uses, needs and opportunities across the region. Thus our choice of a multi-country level study of low-income users and non users of mobile telephony.

Download the DIRSI Regional Report on Mobile Opportunities here (in .pdf).

National report Argentina (in Spanish) [2.4M]

National report Colombia (in Spanish) [2.4M]

National report Jamaica (in English) [2.3M]

National report México (in Spanish) [2.0M]

National report Perú (in Spanish) [1.7M]

National report Trinidad and Tobago (in English) [1.8M]