I just hope that the poor of the world don't end up with a $180 phone bill like I have to deal with in order to have mobile web access. Sadly, in some countries that would be almost 6 months' income.
More people in India have mobile phones than have access to sanitary toilets.
The average Indian user is worth about 0.03c to a network, with no contracts or lockins, and people frequently switch network to network depending on deals.
In fact, in order to avoid fees, a new system has appeared. Calling, letting it ring once, and hanging up. It doesn't cost but it DOES ping the other person.
These call-backs are becoming so pervasive that businesses let people call-back and the business calls them back, at their own expensive, to offer whatever service. Some Indian apps are also incorporating the call-back system into their communication structure.
Don't think that just because we have dumb contracts and bills that the developing world will as well.
Here in the UK, my mobile phone bill is £3.33/month and I get 500MB of data with that.
EDIT: I do this by using T-Mobile PAYG and buying their 6 month Internet booster for £20, twice a year. I've managed to convince all my regular contacts to use Kik Messenger instead of SMS, so I don't have to pay for SMS. I very rarely make phone calls, but I have VOIP with localphone.com when I have to.
At the time I wrote the post, Google's conversion told me it was in the high $4 range. Right now it's saying it is $5.17. Close enough to let the point stand.
Just checked out ovh. Looks good, but because of ovh's 99p/month charge, it still works out cheaper to use localphone unless you make at least a couple of hours of calls per month.
You do get an incoming number that would cost a lot more with localphone. You see localphone is a business and needs to make money. OVH thinks it's a charity just like Google. Maybe a little more generous. I absolutely love their kimsufi.co.uk servers.
I end up using 700 minutes per month just on my line, but I really only talk for about an hour. The majority of my calls are 5-30 second messages from my employer.
Data rates are much cheaper in places where telecom companies don't have to recover the cost of old and outdated equipment. For example, the rates in India are very reasonable, even from mainstream operators
