movirtu
Posted by PrabhasPokharel on Oct 27, 2009
People in the developed world consider the phone a very personal object, something that is always on and always with us. In many developing countries, that's not always the case. People share phones, and many don't own handsets because they are too expensive.
A new company, Movirtu (with a catchy tag line: "Mobile for the next Billion"), wants to extend coverage to so-called bottom-of-the-pyramid customers by using a handset-independent way to connect to the mobile network. The company's goal is to "expand the use of mobile communication by the rural poor communities in Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia living on less than $2 a day" - in order to improve their livelihoods. The method for doing this is to detach owning a phone number from owning a handset--and to allow users to own numbers without owning handsets. And its gaining attention: CEO Nigel Waller was awarded a PopTech Social Innovation fellowship this year, and Movirtu has been shortlisted for Africom's Changing Lives Award.
The idea
