Teleuse@BOP3: A Qualitative Study - LIRNEasia

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36 being once in a week to once in a month at the least frequent. Female respondents in both west and south of India unanimously point out that they have public phones near to their houses and are perfectly comfortable using the same, since they have been doing for a long time. According to the respondents, while mobiles have come within their affordability in the last two to three years, they have a much longer experience of using public booths, ranging for more than fifteen years for some of the senior women. Most of these women are found to have started using the landline booths when they got married and shifted to a new place. At that time, they will call once a month to their native place. Progressively, this is found to have increased to once a week with reducing fixed line calls. Women are comfortable using these booths as they are enclosed ensuring safety and privacy in most cases and provide a place to sit and talk. As a result, women can talk in privacy with their family members as opposed to the openness of their home phones. According to the female respondents, using public phones has never been a hassle as the shops are near their homes, the shopkeepers at times allow them small credits if they talk more than they immediately have money for and they also keep messages for these women when some of them did not have any kind of phones. The women also express a great deal of confidence in using these booths since the number to be called can be both dialed by the shop owner or by themselves. They have been taught to use these phones and have a longer experience using it. Unlike in Pakistan and Bangladesh, none of the Indian female respondents claim ever having been disturbed while talking from a public phone booth. They suggest that using these phones are far more respectable than using other people’s home phones since they pay their own share and can make as many calls as they wish without the booth owner having any objection. Unlike in India, where women use public phones with considerable ease and no distinct social stigma, in Pakistan, several female respondents in the urban group discussion also point out that the public phones being rather far from their homes, is also a reason for their reduced usage or complete non usage. Family members do not consider their need to call urgent enough to allow them to go to these public phones on their own and instead, accompany them in true cases of emergency. In both Pakistan and Bangladesh, female respondents claim to have been subject to verbal abuse and defamation of their character, if they are seen at telephone shops too frequently. In both the countries, women are aspersed to have “loose character” and talking to their lovers and are questioned on their need to talk so much. In Bangladesh, for example, a single working woman, who lives in a paid accommodation, would face the taunts of elder men of the location if she would go to a reload shop on 2 consecutive days. She would have to bear their comments as she needed the reload but at the same time, she would feel humiliated because they would not understand her needs and make her seem like a bad person. However, having experienced this on several occasions, she now prefers to walk extra, to some other reload shop in the neighborhood than the one nearest to her hostel simply to avoid such unpleasantness. Female respondents in both these countries rely extensively on their spouses, brother-in-laws, other male members of the family and even children, for reloading their phones than doing so on their own. This is ironic in the case of Bangladesh where Grameen’s women manned booths are considered to be a pioneering effort in equalizing telecom availability to both genders in the country. However, it should be pointed out that female
ownership of public phones in an urban center like Dhaka and areas close to it are quite rare but are likely to be more prominent in far interiors of the country. South East Asian countries do not show any such restrictions on female usage of public spaces. In Philippines, both male as well as female respondents use public phones only when they are out of credit on their mobile phones and rarely when they have to talk to their family members living in distant places who own a landline connection as it is cheaper to make calls from a landline to another landline. Both male and female BOP respondents avoid making special efforts by leaving their work to make calls from a public phone. With the introduction of mobile phones, the use of public phones is already on the decline in Thailand. There are no significant differences in women’s motivation to use public phones and no socio-cultural factors that influence their usage of public phones can be deduced apart from the fact that mobile conversations can be more ‘private’ in nature as opposed to using public phones. The gender differences in teleuse seem quite prominent and crop up in dependencies for phone use, recload behavior and the impact on domesticity in South Asia. Male phone owners being primary earning members of their household in all these countries, depend on their income to enable their own mobile use. Even non-earning younger male respondents are comparatively free from any dependencies on parents for getting phone money. In contrast, all the housewives in the research said they are reliant on their husbands to fill up their phones. Only the working women are self reliant but they still exercise substantial control over their own spending. In Bangladesh, for example, the average amount of the recharge which male respondents undertake for themselves maybe in the region of 20 taka (USD 0.28) but the frequency of the recharge is at least once a day, leading to a minimum of 140 taka / week (USD 1.96 / week). In contrast, most married women respondents who owned their individual handsets state that on an average their husbands will refill for 50 taka (USD 0.70) and expect them to use it for a week. Single women also seek to limit their reload to up to 50-60 (USD 0.70-0.80) taka per week. In Sri Lanka, both the genders reload for 50 Sri Lankan rupees (USD 0.40) on average per week but more male members than female say they even recharge of 100 Sri Lankan Rupees (USD 0.80) at times. Often they run out of this within 3-4 days and reload with 10-20 Sri Lankan rupees (USD 0.08-0.16) as convenient for them. The reload values for women are in 20 to 30 Sri Lanka rupees (USD 0.16-0.24) whereas for men it is a more automatic 50 rupees (USD 0.40) denomination. No perceived dependence is found on men by the female respondents vis-à-vis their recharge, other than to avoid the hassle of going to the shop. Interestingly, no major differences in phone usage are seen amongst male and female respondents in Sri Lanka. Both the male and female BOP users in Sri Lanka use their phones to coordinate work (in case of working women) 37
Page 1 and 2: Teleuse@BOP3: A Qualitative Study C
Page 4: 4 Contents Introduction 07 Review o
Page 8 and 9: 8 pyramid neglects the true base of
Page 10 and 11: 10 Sub Classification of the Resear
Page 12 and 13: 12 Location • According to the qu
Page 14 and 15: 14 Migration and Mobile Usage Needs
Page 16 and 17: 16 Methodology Sample of the Study
Page 18 and 19: 18 INDIA: West Zone Location Protoc
Page 20 and 21: 20 PAKISTAN Location Protocol Age G
Page 22 and 23: 22 SRI LANKA Location Protocol Age
Page 24 and 25: 24 Research Locations Location Sele
Page 26 and 27: 26 In the south zone, the study was
Page 28 and 29: 28 Thailand In Thailand Chiang Mai
Page 30 and 31: 30 Review of Field Research Process
Page 32 and 33: 32 Demographic Trends Gender Gender
Page 34 and 35: 34 Female respondents from both the
Page 38 and 39: 38 for similar reasons like coordin
Page 40 and 41: 40 failure to understand why their
Page 42 and 43: 42 them in using the phone. In Thai
Page 44 and 45: 44 Maneesh in Srirangapattana. They
Page 46 and 47: 46 the male rural group discussion
Page 48 and 49: 48 acceptable teleuse practice. In
Page 50 and 51: 50 In Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indi
Page 52 and 53: 52 As a result, in terms of the age
Page 54 and 55: 54 super abundance of shops in all
Page 56 and 57: 56 Visayas and Mindanao, major infr
Page 58 and 59: 58 three to four years. In Kundur,
Page 60 and 61: 60 outstrips the supply. They also
Page 62 and 63: 62 Institutional Resources Institut
Page 64 and 65: 64 In Pakistan and Bangladesh, the
Page 66 and 67: 66 hand counted land phones with mo
Page 68 and 69: 68 In Philippines, even though ther
Page 70 and 71: 70 Male respondents above 25 years
Page 72 and 73: 72 friend forgot and she missed out
Page 74 and 75: 74 before above and beyond his regu
Page 76 and 77: 76 countries said that although you
Page 78 and 79: 78 Lanka again in Dipali. While the
Page 80 and 81: 80 In Sri Lanka, Dhanambra also fee
Page 82 and 83: 82 ‘textmates’. Textmates are d
Page 84 and 85: 84 Business and Entrepreneurial Mob
Page 86 and 87:
86 manufacturer where her job is to
Page 88 and 89:
88 respondents distrust mobile tech
Page 90 and 91:
90 reload and even network challeng
Page 92 and 93:
92 explaining why perceived benefit
Page 94 and 95:
94 Migration and Mobile Usage Needs
Page 96 and 97:
96 Financial Coordination Financial
Page 98 and 99:
98 are more likely to have someone
Page 100 and 101:
100 frequently lost money, the bus
Page 102 and 103:
102 services from their friends and
Page 104 and 105:
104 SMS is the primary ‘more than
Page 106 and 107:
106 Since most of the respondents i
Page 108 and 109:
108 The direction for Mobile 2.0 se
Page 110 and 111:
110 discussions in Philippines ment
Page 112 and 113:
112 more ready access to cable TV t
Page 114 and 115:
114 most of the text message in Phi
Page 116 and 117:
116 Sri Lanka is also the only coun
Page 118 and 119:
118 advices, to servicing and credi
Page 120 and 121:
120 Jain, Abhay, and B. S. Hundal.
Page 122 and 123:
122 http://esa.un.org/wup/source/co
Page 124:
Teleuse at the base of the pyramid
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Teleuse@BOP3: A Qualitative Study - LIRNEasia

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