I intend to keep the post short. I came across this link on Boing Boing about the village public telephones in Bangladesh.
A village public telephone is thus :
Each Village phone remains under the custody of a village pay phone operator, who is responsible for extending the services to the customers for both incoming and outgoing calls, collection of call charges according to prescribed rates and proper maintenance of telephone set. The operator’s income is derived from the difference between the air time charges paid by customer/s and the billed amount required to be paid by the VP operator along with a flat charge for each incoming call.
(link)
The idea that it works has been taken from this case summary. (Another case study here)
I believe that this model can be suitably adapted for India scenario too. However, we would need someone ‘visionary’ to make this happen on a large scale. Much like the Grameen Bank which disburses microcredit for self help rural groups. Incidentally, Muhammad Yunus, pioneer of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year. (Details on New York Times; incase you are forced to sign in to read the issue- check out Bugmenot for logins).
Google search throws up a lot of interesting links.
This content is published under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Related posts:
- One India It misses it’s mark again. At first, I was apprehensive and now I am sure that this is one of...
- Govt. of India devilish agents I chose to highlight the persistent mess in the Government of India’s “devilish” departments that have spawned legions of morons...
- One India plan:Now leftist pressure I couldn’t resist citing the entry in People’s Democracy which is the official mouth piece of the rag tag left...
- India- happy hunting ground for expoitation I came across this link via ZD Net. Surprisingly, Financial Express (from where this article is sourced from), hit the...
- Broadband in India: WimaX ready? The last mile access is the holy grail; this is one of the most contentious issues across the world as...
- Incoming myths Last year saw flurry of actvity to allow “incoming for life”. The first salve was fired up by Tata’s with...
- Future of Broadband in India Future of Broadband in India The mother of all announcements proceeded the last parliamentary session. That was the day when...
- Paid for Media Exposure in India Paid for Media Exposure in India Is there a paid media exposure? I had alluded to the same in one...
- Affordable Telecom in India Affordable Telecom in India The most important aspect of affordable telecom is a cost effective mobile handset. Surprisingly I did...
- Broadband in India:Wimax and 3G Arguably, this has the hacks interested. There is a lot of hoopla about the probable launch of WiMax in Chennai....
