The good news is that mobile phones are becoming cheaper. But the not-so-good news is that the mobile global industry is yet to take up creative solutions to ensure that the mobile handsets increasingly being used by the less-affluent are not stolen from them.
"(It’s increasingly becoming) a challenge to protect the poor peoples’ investment (in mobile handsets)," says Abu Saeed Khan, the Bangladesh-based telecom researcher.
Speaking at the APC regional consultation on ICT policy in South Asia, held at Dhaka from April 19-21, Khan argued that mobiles remained the "only mode of providing connectivity to everybody, regardless of whether they are poor or rich."
Until March 2006, more than 2.3 billion used mobile phones, about 1.8 billion used the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard. This industry had a $570 billion turnover and provides voice, text and internet services.
One million mobile customers are being added every day. China, India, Russia, Africa, and the Latin America region are the main markets.
"Yet over 3 billion unconnected live under the mobile networks’ coverage. Emerging markets are those where mobile penetration is still below 50%. Average return per user is less than USD 5 per month," he said.
Ultra low-cost handsets were born in 2004. The worldwide GSM Association invited bids, and Motorola won both contracts. This initiative is expected to bring down costs of handsets-for-the-non-affluent to below USD 30. Ten operators from
27 markets – including populous countries like India – are vying for the benefits of such a scheme.
For instance, the C113x is the world’s very first ultra low-cost handset. It’s slated to be shipped by the second quarter of 2006.
Infineon’s attempt is to build a mobile handset priced at below 20 and Phillips’ will be below USD 40, Khan said showing a number of illustrations of the planned hardware that’s anticipated in the market in a very short time from now.
Both are to integrate main functions into a single chip. The logic is simple: the lesser the components, the fewer the energy consumption. Battery costs add in a big way to the total cost of the phone.
Texas Instruments’ attempt is also to reduce components, and reduce the energy. "The battery is the key issue that’s reducing the cost," says Khan.
Nokia last summer sold its one-billionth handset. In March 2006, Nokia has also launched three different handsets for people who will use the mobile phone for the first time in their life.
In 2004, 248 million handsets were sold on the black markets. Some were probably stolen. This, argued Khan, causes a tax revenue loss of $2.7 billion dollars globally.
"Among 248 million it’s hard to say how many were stolen," he adds. "For instance, there’s not a continent in this world where we have not found a mobile phone that was stolen in London."
But the GSM Association simply doesn’t recognise the crucial need for protection of the handset. There are ways to ensure this, currently too. For instance, if you dial *#06# on your handset, you immediately get a fifteen digit unique number of your mobile phone.
It’s possible to maintain a central electronic identification registrar to ensure that phones reported stolen are made unusable, Khan argues. Making phones unusable would immediately kill the incentive to steal them.
"It (the market in stolen phones) harms everybody. But more so the user of the ultra-low-cost handset,” he says.
"Protecting the unprotected is doable. Our objective should be to diminish the value of a stolen good," Khan argues.
Contact: Abu Saeed Khan
saeed at bol-online.com