“Business became so much easier,” Kamau said. “I never turned my phone off because there was always money to be made.”
CASE STUDY 4: CHINA
Wei Fang, 41, was managing on a monthly income of less than 500 yuan (US$72) when she splashed out on her first mobile phone two years ago.
“It was more than 100 yuan, and I was working in a factory. So you can imagine how expensive it was for me. But I’m so far from home, and if I didn’t have a phone my family would worry,” she said.
More than 600 million Chinese people own mobiles. Tens of millions are migrants, like Wei. The phone is their only sure way of keeping in touch with spouses, children and parents whom they see once a year at best. Wei works in Shenzhen, hundreds of kilometers from her teenage son and parents in Guangxi.
While she now has a better job, as a live-in maid, she tries to keep her phone bill below 50 yuan a month.
“Usually my contact with my son is one message a week,” she said. “My phone doesn’t have functions like a camera. I send messages more than calling because texting is cheaper, and the cheaper the better is the rule for me.”
Phone owners sent 700 billion messages last year. For younger people, especially the urban middle class, mobiles are a status symbol, upgraded every nine to 12 months. Flashy new models appear on billboards; you can even buy one encrusted with diamonds.
The world’s largest Internet population is also turning to handsets to access the Web, and young people love mobile gaming: Usage rose 62 percent last year.
But mobiles have another function — sharing news shunned by the media and removed from the web by censors. Facts, lurid rumors and satirical jokes spread quickly via text message.
Two years ago, hundreds of thousands of texts created a massive protest against a chemical plant in Xiamen — although the authorities reportedly later blocked messages. In unrest, witnesses routinely post pictures or video on blogs, or send them to friends. In general, they are ordinary citizens venting frustrations or sharing information; dissidents are aware that officials can and do monitor calls and texts. At tense moments, the mobile network can abruptly disappear — as in Tibetan areas of west China in the run-up to this month’s 50th anniversary of the failed uprising in Tibet; last year, people filmed the unrest on their handsets.
CALLING FROM EVEREST
It’s a beautiful moment. You’re literally on top of the world, having climbed to the summit of Mount Everest.
Then you hear your mobile. Being 8,848m above sea level is no longer an excuse for not answering. In 2007 China Telecom installed a mast near the Everest base camp.
With 100,000 phone masts erected each year, the number of places with “no signal” is dwindling fast.
“More than 90 percent of the global population now has access,” said Gabriel Solomon of mobile trade body GSMA.
Even North Korea has lifted a ban, though access to handsets and international lines are heavily restricted.
Remote spots like Bhutan or Tibet are increasingly in reach. Networks are also covering Africa, with a US$50 billion investment in the sub-Sahara region alone. Only unpopulated areas like Antarctica or Chile’s Atacama desert will remain off the hook. Closer to home, a few areas remain silent, but Solomon says that after the 2012 digital switchover UK coverage will be “ubiquitous.”
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