I’m intrigued by this program to offer cheap handsets for the poor (from The Register), but I have my doubts. The Register says
Motorola has been selected by the GSM Association (GSMA) to supply the handsets for its programme to provide mobile telephony to people in developing countries. Motorola will commence delivery of these phones in the first quarter of 2006, as the second phase of the GSMA’s Emerging Market Handset (EMH) programme gets underway. The stated aims of the programme are to advance the social and economic development of emerging markets through mobile communications. It includes an initiative to provide mobile phones that cost less than USD30 apiece onto the market in poorer nations.
Where I live you can get a second-hand handset for less than that. Indeed, in Indonesia handsets are so cheap everyone, and I mean everyone, has at least one. Wouldn’t it make more sense to give developing countries (ok, ‘emerging markets’) second-hand phones from the developed countries (‘emerged markets’). Wouldn’t it be better just to give these things away?