Wireless Communication and Development: Micro and Macro Linkages

Abstract

This issue of ITID brings together ave perspectives on the role wireless technologies can play in the deployment of communication infrastructure and services throughout developing regions. They were selected from the papers presented at the workshop Wireless Communication and Development: A Global Perspective, organized by the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication, at the University of Southern California, in October 2005.1 Historically, considerable hopes have been placed on the promise of wireless technologies to help bring communication networks to underserved areas. Because they do not require the deployment of expensive wire networks—with the attendant need for rights of way—wireless networks have been seen as the best way to bring communication access to remote areas quickly. With the advent of relatively inexpensive and broadly available wireless technologies, connectivity seemed within economic reach of poor regions. And because the new wireless devices are increasingly based on advanced digital technologies, this suggested possibilities for the developing world to leapfrog some of the evolutionary steps taken in the developed world. Wireless thus promised to enable rapid, low-cost deployment of an advanced communication infrastructure. The articles in this issue offer a timely examination of how these hopes are working out in practice. They span a variety of geographies, examining cities, regions, and countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. They focus on several applications of wireless technologies, ranging from cellular telephony to satellite and Wi-Fi. They examine wireless deployment and the associated economic and policy issues at a variety of levels of analysis, spanning a range of disciplinary approaches. The papers by Jonathan Donner, and Judith Mariscal and Eugenio Rivera examine the driving forces behind the cellular telephony boom in Africa (speciacally in Rwanda) and Latin America, respectively. Donner’s article discusses the microlevel impact of mobile phones on the social and business networks of microentrepreneurs in Kigali, Rwanda. Based on a detailed survey of calling patterns, it shows how access to a mobile phone is critical for small business owners to expand existing business relations. The article further suggests that access to this technology is key to the sustainability and success of microenterprises. Mariscal and Rivera offer a macrolevel perspective on the evolution of the mobile telephony market in Mexico since the 1990s. The authors document the successful diffusion of mobile services among the poor (and the business and regulatory strategies driving this growth) but raise signiacant concerns about the current market evolution toward the formation of a regional duopoly.