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Internet Extends Reach Of Bangladeshi Villagers
Mahbubul Ambia, who started an Internet center in the town of Charkhai, has helped customers find doctors, make Internet phone calls and communicate by video conference.
(Kevin Sullivan - Twp)
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The Internet centers are being set up by GrameenPhone, a cellphone provider partly owned by the Grameen Bank, which shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize with its founder, Muhammad Yunus.
The centers are building on a cellphone network created over the past decade by a Grameen Bank program that helped provide more than 250,000 cellphones in villages. When that program started in 1997, only 1.5 percent of the population had access to a telephone; that has risen to more than 10 percent.
Staying Connected
Goats grazed on litter outside Ambia's little Internet shop in Charkhai, where merchants sell bright red tomatoes and honking ducks in the crowded central market.
Bangladesh, where the United Nations says average annual income is about $440, is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with its 150 million people crammed into an area roughly the size of Iowa.
Ambia's shop sits wedged between a stall where men sell huge sacks of rice and one selling cheap plastic shoes. By midmorning on a steamy September day, at least 20 people stood in line waiting to use one of Ambia's two Chinese-made computers.
A woman named Aleya, 55, sat down on a small plastic chair and handed Ambia a scrap of paper with a London phone number. She said that her 18-year-old daughter was getting married and that she was calling her uncle in England to ask him to help pay for it. Aleya said her husband is a construction worker who earns about $70 a month, barely enough to feed their five children.
Ambia dialed the number on the keyboard of his computer, connected by a cable to a Motorola cellphone. The call connected using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology, which allows calls to be placed from a computer to another computer or a telephone anywhere in the world -- for little or no cost.
VoIP technology is growing rapidly. One of the biggest brands, Skype, was founded in August 2003 and now has 136 million registered users. Companies such as Vonage and Yahoo also offer the service and are expanding exponentially.
Aleya picked up the small telephone handset connected to the computer and her face lit up. Her uncle, who owns a restaurant in London, promised that he'd make arrangements to send money for the wedding.
The five-minute call cost 8 Bangladeshi taka, about 11 cents.
"An 8-taka call has earned me thousands," Aleya said with a broad smile.
Before Ambia's center opened in February, Aleya said, she would have called her uncle on a borrowed cellphone at a cost of more than $2, her husband's daily wage.
