A lady stands in front of her house, in the glow of a kerosene lamp – an important, but expensive, source of heat and light in India
Mary Roach, Business Development Manager for the GSMA Community Power from Mobile Programme, writes the latest in our guest blog series
James Wolfensohn’s New York Times op-ed highlighted the role that mobile phones can have on fighting the inequalities women in the developing world face. But a phone is not enough: phone charging remains a significant barrier in unlocking the potential of mobile for development.
Although this barrier is not unique to women, it being an on-going challenge faced by the estimated 500M off-grid mobile connections in the developing world, as ‘Striving and Surviving: Exploring the Lives of Base of the Pyramid Women,’ the recent report by GSMA mWomen identified, the energy gap is a significant barrier to women’s mobile phone ownership and use.
As part of my role with the GSMA’s Community Power from Mobile programme, I try to spend as much time as possible in the field trying to understand the livelihoods of the rural poor and their energy needs. On a recent trip to rural Bihar, India, I had the opportunity to meet Priya* outside her home. It was dusk and I was attracted to Priya’s home by the soft light of a kerosene lamp. Like many of the 400 million Indians living without access to electricity, Priya’s family relies on kerosene for lighting and travels to the nearest town to charge their mobile phone. On a monthly basis, her family spends up to $7 on kerosene for lighting and over $1 to charge her family’s phone. To put this phone charging figure into perspective, the national average revenue per user (ARPU) for India, including high data consumers in Mumbai and Delhi, hovers around $2/month!
While more research is needed to better understand the actual ARPU spend of rural customers to have conclusive evidence, my field visit in Bihar reinforces the research GVEP completed in East Africa in 2011: in Uganda and Tanzania off-grid subscribers are known to spend between $2 -$3/month on phone charging when ARPU is approximately $4.5. Such is the value put on being connected via their mobile phone that in Sub-Saharan Africa and India, off-grid subscribers can spend half of the national ARPU on charging their phone, before they even make a call. Which is exactly how much Priya and her family spend on charging their mobile phone.
What would they do with their phone if they could charge it more affordably? By partnering with energy product and service companies, the mobile industry will not only be able to reduce the significant cost off-grid subscribers pay for their mobile services, it will also make their access to life-enhancing mobile information services – such as health, education and mobile money – a reality. Crucially for sustainability, it will also enable the mobile industry to realise a significant revenue opportunity, powering a win-win situation for all.
*Names have been changed.