November 15, 2007
Mobile phones reach Uganda's villages
In a village called Kkonkoma, on the roof of a small house there is an aerial. It is a mobile phone antenna for a home-based village telephone service run by 24-year-old entrepreneur Joseph Ssesanga and his family. [via the BBC]
Neighbours make telephone calls from his house rather than walk down the dirt track to the nearest public telephone some five kilometres away.
This is the Village Phone-model, which provides a business in a box. With loans, budding entrepreneurs can buy a mobile phone, a car battery to charge it, and a booster antenna that can pick up signals from base stations situated up to 25 kilometres away.
The handset is loaded with software that tracks revenues from every call.
The loan providers, so-called microfinance institutions, take on the task of ordering the equipment and transporting it to those who cannot afford to travel long distances. "
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