Natural obsolescence of village phone

Authors:
Sara Boettiger;Kentaro Toyama;Rezwana Abed
Affiliations:
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA;University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA;University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
Venue:
Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development
Year:
2012

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Abstract

Grameen Telecom's famous Village Phone program in Bangladesh has been hailed as an innovative model of ICT-based international development, and promoted by international aid agencies in a wide range of developing countries. Despite implementation at scale, and success both as a business model and in its impact on the poor, the Village Phone programs appear time-limited. Decline of Village Phone model is driven in part by mobile penetration obviating the need for a specialized service selling phone usage, but there are other intertwined factors. In this paper, we perform a multidisciplinary analysis of the evolution of the Village Phone program, which leads to two conclusions: (1) The rise-and-fall narrative arc of the Village Phone was an inevitable outcome of the multiple forces -- technological, economic, socio-cultural, and policy-based -- that allowed its initial success. It's success led to its decline. (2) Certain patterns of the Village Phone model may generalize to other instances of a common-use assetmodel, leading to high-level explanations for something we call natural obsolescence, as well as recommendations for such transitional interventions.