Community-based Networks and Innovative Technologies: New ...

New models to serve and empower the poorfor which the community ownership works best. Following this, an explanation of whythe community ownership model is not more widely applied is considered, which also givesus an idea of some of the obstacles to be overcome. Finally, several characteristics mostconducive to the community ownership model are sketched out.4.1 Comparison and Compatibility with a Private Enterprise Model.Would a private entrepreneurial model equally or more rapidly address rural and low-incomedemand, through its capacity to mobilise local sources of capital and enterprise?A 2003 ILO study offers a prima facie case that participatory cooperative ownership ingeneral may be better for poverty reduction. The study examined enterprises in somedepth across a range of sectors, and concluded with the following:These case studies have shown just how widely the cooperative form can be applied, and howit can succeed in helping the poorest and most vulnerable people to become organized. Theyshow that, provided the method of development is participatory, the cooperative form isreplicable. Where there are […] for-profit alternatives the cases demonstrate that the cooperativeform is – for the aim of poverty reduction – superior. Where there are no alternatives,it shows that even a relatively weak form of cooperation is better than nothing (Birchall2003 p62).But is there empirical evidence that this applies to extending ICT network infrastructureand services to poor communities?Private Entrepreneurial ModelsThe last decade has seen a number of private enterprise based attempts to launch a rapidlyreplicable model for broadening access to telecommunication services by harnessinglocal entrepreneurs, often by means of a franchise (see e.g. ITU 2003a Ch 6). The Akshayamodel, as we have seen, incorporates a strong community decision-making influence intothe enterprise and its market activities, and thus should be considered as a hybrid. Butothers fashion themselves more closely upon the market-driven private enterprise model.One example is the well-known Grameen Phone Village Programme in Bangladesh.Although linked to the non-profit Grameen organisation, 19 it can be classified as a privateenterprise driven model, which obtains finance through the provision of micro-creditfacilities and that generates demand by pooling mobile phone use of low-income users.A local entrepreneur (the selection of whom is strongly biased towards poor women)purchases the handset with credit and sells on telephony services at affordable rates.Grameen Phone is itself a major mobile phone operator and provides the airtime at cost.It thus extends access to telephony to poorer groups within communities, and enhancesthe marginal viability of the mobile network by pooling use. But the commercial viabilityof the network as a whole is based mainly on the demand of conventional customers,and the programme does not extend the area of network coverage per se (although thereare plans afoot to do this).How widely replicable is this experience?38