Rural communication: Is there still a need for telecentres now that there are mobile phones?

[Sandra Nassali]

Hi all, this study was conducted by APC, comparing the role of mobile phones and telecentres in fostering rural development.

It is noted that mobile phone towers dominate the landscape of many countries where decent internet access still remains a dream. The Economist argues that mobile is all that matters now and many donors have succumbed to this vision, retreating en-masse from rural information and communication technology development. The author of the new report commissioned by APC concludes that "This has left the development of ICTs in the hands of large, highly-centralized telecoms."

APCNews however looks at the rationale behind getting internet into rural areas via wireless and not leaving it all to mobile, and reports back on real-life community efforts that have been taking internet access to parts of Latin America ignored by large companies.
MONTEVIDEO (Ian Howard for APCNews) argued that following the initial rush of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) projects in rural Africa, many did not yield the anticipated outcomes, and interest has been dying down. People then began talking about "sustainable ICT" projects that would become self-sufficient after their initial set-up period. But with mobile phones gaining in popularity, popular rhetoric has begun to question the need of ICTs beyond the mobile phone. While mobiles have had a great impact in rural areas, a new study by Ian Howard, commissioned by APC, argues that the need for telecentres and affordable internet connections exists, as such centres cater to rural and niche markets the way larger companies cannot.

What is your take on this? Please share your views with us.

Sandra

[Sandra Nassali]

Hi Christine, thanks for your contribution. I think the idea of creating a group would be great.

Sandra

[Vikas Kanungo]

HI Christine

It will be a good idea to create a group. We have created a global reposiroty and knowledge portal on mobile government in association with e-development thematic group of The World Bank. The URL is http://www.mgovworld.org

I will be happy to add a dedicated section on "MObiles for Telecentres" or Telecentremobile whatever we decide mutually and add the knowledge there. The RSS feed from the group may also be highlighted on the portal. IN any case , lets start with creation of the group. I will be happy to assist the creation of the group and invite people from global mobile for transformation community to participate in the discussions.

Vikas Kanungo

[Cuchie Echeverria]

hi sandra.

this is indeed a very interesting topic. coming from a third world country where infrastructure and connectivity are major issues and at the same time where mobile phone penetration is rather high (the Philippines is dubbed "the texting capital of the world"), i'd say that mobile phones are no replacement for telecentres. this is mainly because there are certain things you can do inside the telecentre that are not at all possible with a mobile phone alone. i think that the two are actually complementary to each other, and, if made to work together, they can be a potent tool for bridging the digital divide.

i know of a particular initiative here in the philippines where they have started using mobile telephony to enhance the services of the telecentre that caters specifically to farmers, and this has so far proven to be effective strategy.

[Sandra Nassali]

Hi all, i think mobile phones are taking on a whole new trend. They are apparently penetrating all sectors of our society. In my country (Uganda) StanChart Bank launched Phone Banking. Mobile banking will enable customers to access banking services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This portrays that this mobile phone theology is not going to only stop in affecting our social lives greatly but the economic ones too.

After starting this discussion and looking at all the contributions you people have made, i decided to take a closer look at the services my mobile phone does for me. They are indeed a lot- i can access the internet, make calls, send sms, play games, send and receive emails, have access to blue tooth, weather forecasts, prices for products, forex rates and many other services. In deed, there role towards development can not be ignored.

[Christine Prefontaine]

Hi All,

Just to let you know I went ahead and created a telecentres and mobiles group. You can add resources to the group by tagging them as — telecentresandmobiles — in delicious.com. They will automatically show up in the group's resources section (via RSS).

[Shipra Sharma]

Hi everybody! I am a late comer to this discussion. What I wanted to share about the relevance of the telecentres in face of competition from mobile and other similar devices was too long, so I decided to post a blog. My perception about telecentres and mobile is purely from the rural Indian perspective which still lays a lot of emphasis on the concept of 'community'.

If you visit a village here, it is more like an extended, big family where everybody knows each other. The 'telecentre concept' fits into this perspective beautifully as it has a 'social' character. It draws a lot of similarity to the traditional meeting places called 'chaupals' with the added advantages of the ICTs including the mobile.

Standing alone, the mobile looks like a very 'individualistic' device. It can never acquire the same community or social character that the telecentre is most likely to enjoy in the Indian rural areas. It will remain a technical device to receive and send informations. And as a community, an information is not internalised unless it is discussed and varified face to face with several people!
This is where the telecentre has an edge over the mobile phones.

[Vikas Kanungo]

Hi Shipra

Since you joined the discussion late, I would like to clarify for your benefit and also for the benefit of any other new entrants to the discussion that we not at all discussing whether telecentres have an edge over mobile devices or vice-versa. What is being discussed is the complimentarity between the two platforms. While Telecentres importance is not being questioned at all in the discussion, what is being discussed is how mobile / wireless technologies can help extend the reach of telecentres and make them more inclusive.

There is immense unexplored potential of mobile/wireless technologies which needs to be researched in the context of taking telecentres to the next level where they are more inclusive as well as sustainable. and mobiles can offer many innovative services to be delivered by telecenres only if we focussed on the complimentarity of the platforms rather than getting into the discussion of which platform has an edge over the other.

REgards
Vikas Kanungo

[Karungi Winnie Destiny]

Hi Sandra,
The Telecenter Vs Mobile phone comparison atticle was great!
However Popular Mobile phones are Sandra, they cant be equated to the role of Telecenters in disserminating information which then calls for more developing of these centers in our rural Africa.

[Sandra Nassali]

Thank you Winnie for your contribution, would really be glad if i saw more of you in puts on the site..am sure the community would love it too.
Sandra

[Oliver Zielke]

The village I'm currently working in outside of Madurai, India, has no telecentre, but, as is typical, lots of people have mobile phones. Within the next two years, people in the village and of course urban citizens as well will have inexpensive new generation phone / laptop / netbook hybrid devices, with keyboards and nice screens, and have mobile broadband access ("4G" or "LTE" as offered by the mobile telecoms, or WiMax). I believe the convergence of these two new technologies will seriously challenge the raison d'être of telecentres.

What I think Howard fails to fully realize is that a) mobile operators will continue to provide access to the rural population as it is lucrative, and b) with full mobile high speed access and a decent screen and keyboard, everything changes--all the wonderful sites and applications and collaboration spaces on the Internet that we know and love will become available to a whole new mass of people, who will benefit from them in terms of knowledge and awareness and access to goods and services.

When a group of folks on gathered in the front yard or on a street corner with their pocket-sized netbooks and high speed access essentially exist as their own mobile, wireless telecentre, what role does a telecentre have? In my opinion, its then all about the application side (shameless self-promotion: www.yodigo.tv).

The guy up the street from my house has a little 1 rupee pay phone fixed on the wall between the road and his front yard. Payphones are becoming virtually extinct as mobile phone use grows. I bet telecentres become obsolete as mobile broadband and netbooks / "smartphones" becomes pervasive.

[Marco Figueiredo]

I don't quite agree that telecenters will become obsolete as "mobile broadband and netbooks / smartphones becomes pervasive", because first the later need to reach a cost/performance level where most people, and I mean the close to 4 billion people who don't have access to either cell phones nor the Internet, can afford them.

So as some profess in this discussion, I think telecenters and mobile devices will co-exist for a while. If telecenters ever become obsolete, it is when they will have fulfilled their main objective which is to stage the insertion of modern ICTs in low-income communities. We all wish one day everyone will be able to afford not just a cell phone but a computer with broadband access at home (cell phones are computers already). But what is the most efficient way to insert a new technology into a village that can't afford it? Simple, share the costs. And that is what telecenters do, share the costs and the benefits among members of a community. There is another important thing telecenters do: people use them to learn how to use modern ICTs. As a result the cost benefit ratio to bring the technology home decreases. Let me explain this more clearly. If one buys a PC for $500 and pays $30/month to access broadband Internet, before he/she even knows how to use the computer or the Internet, he/she will be spending his/her own resources for quite a while before the benefits can be harvested since he/she will be learning how to use the new tools. By using the telecenter, the startup costs are reduced and thus facilitate new entrants to the Information Society.

There is another way to look at the intersection between cell phones and telecenters, and that is from the technology and business model angles. Telecenter themselves can become wireless access hubs through wifi and voip solutions that can actually compete with cell phones in cost and performance. The only problem is that the technology packages that enable this solution is not so well integrated and have not reached mass market levels to bring cost of ownership of a wifi-voip device to that of a cell-phone, which is subsidized by the telecom, and paid for by the user as a percentage of the connection cost. The bottom line is that today it is feasible to create an all digital wireless telephone company in a village telecenter. But I don't know of anyone selling this package to telecenters or creating a company to support them with inter-village or global calls.

I address this possibility in what I am calling the Reverse Franchising Telecenter model. Check my initial blog on this subject at http://telecentrecommunity.ning.com/profiles/blogs/reverse-franchis...

Can you imagine a wireless telephone company organized as a franchise of local telecenters, competing with traditional telecoms, where all the profits goes to the top of the chain. In a reverse franchising model, the profits from local services stay local, and a percentage of the network profits flows from the network provider to the telecenter, building sustainability and wealth in the village.

[Sandra Nassali]

Hey @ Marco and Oliver, thank you for the contributions to this discussion. I strongly agree with Marco that in the meantime, telecentres should co-exist with other technologies, mobile devices inclusive.

@ Oliver, you should agree with most participants that though mobile phones are gaining so much popularity in rural and in accessible areas, where telecentres do not have an upper hand, they still can not promote community development. Factors like their costs should not be ignored.

Mobile phones are individualist unlike telecentres. We are looking at promoting development not only for self but for all.

Sandra