Why is it such a challenge to provide telecommunications to rural areas? High initial infrastructure investment, relative low call volumes, high maintenance costs due to harsh environments, cash box collection needs, cash security costs (for coin operated phones), card availability (for prepaid airtime systems), technical illiteracy, remote locations, and high transportation costs are just some of the impediments to providing rural telecommunications access. This manual is based on the experiences of the Village Phone Programmes in Bangladesh and Uganda. In rural villages where no telecommunications services have previously existed, the programme provides cellular phones via a sustainable financing mechanism to poor entrepreneurs who use the phone to operate a business. Such has been the success that over 2,000 village phone businesses are now operating in remote villages of Uganda. This manual is a guideline for replicating the programme in a new country. It establishes a template for creating sustainable initiatives that bring telecommunications to the poor, create viable new businesses for micro-entrepreneurs, and expand the customer base for telecommunications companies.

Emphasizes the need to consider the geographic, historic, and cultural context of an information communication technology (ICT) for development initiative. This work includes several real examples that show some of the key success factors that have to be taken into consideration when using ICTs for development. It is a tool for practitioners.

This book examines how theoretically optimal concepts actually get implemented in the hard terrain of emerging Asia. It gleans lessons from five Asian countries \2014 Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka \2014 based on their experiences with expanding ICT connectivity. It reports the findings of a cutting-edge 3000+ sample demand-side survey of telephone use at the "bottom of the pyramid" in India and Sri Lanka. It considers the problem of expanding connectivity from different angles: that of the user, the operator, the policymaker, the regulator, and civil society. And it sheds light on a range of situations and technologies, like telephone use in post-conflict regions of Sri Lanka, Wi-Fi deployment in Indonesia, and universal service obligations in India

As technology grows as the largest source of modern economic growth, the emergence of new models is currently challenging the standard western model of organizational management. Companies from all over the world have succeeded in creating emerging economies with these new models and are now competing with established multinational corporations. Organizational Innovation and IT Governance in Emerging Economies develops a methodological framework that supports new approaches of technological innovation by companies. This reference book provides contributions from experts in emerging economies, highlighting specific case studies of home grown companies from these emerging markets, offering lessons on how traditional multinationals can compete with these new companies for policymakers, government officers, academics, researchers, students, and practitioners.

In the increasingly competitive corporate sector, businesses must examine their current practices to ensure business success. By examining their social, financial, and environmental risks, obligations, and opportunities, businesses can re-design their operations more effectively to ensure prosperity. Sustainable Business: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source that explores the best practices that promote business sustainability, including examining how economic, social, and environmental aspects are related to each other in the company’s management and performance. Highlighting a range of topics such as lean manufacturing, sustainable business model innovation, and ethical consumerism, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for entrepreneurs, business executives, business professionals, managers, and academics seeking current research on sustainable business practices.

This volume offers a detailed conceptual framework for understanding and learning about technology innovation policies and programs, and their implementation in the context of different countries.

The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography provides an authoritative and comprehensive source of information on the discipline of human geography and its constituent, and related, subject areas. The encyclopedia includes over 1,000 detailed entries on philosophy and theory, key concepts, methods and practices, biographies of notable geographers, and geographical thought and praxis in different parts of the world. This groundbreaking project covers every field of human geography and the discipline’s relationships to other disciplines, and is global in scope, involving an international set of contributors. Given its broad, inclusive scope and unique online accessibility, it is anticipated that the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography will become the major reference work for the discipline over the coming decades. The Encyclopedia will be available in both limited edition print and online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit http://info.sciencedirect.com/content/books/ref_works/coming/ Available online on ScienceDirect and in limited edition print format Broad, interdisciplinary coverage across human geography: Philosophy, Methods, People, Social/Cultural, Political, Economic, Development, Health, Cartography, Urban, Historical, Regional Comprehensive and unique - the first of its kind in human geography

"This book provides a comprehensive coverage of broadband deployment, diffusion, adoption, usage, and policies as they have been realized by research in many countries around the world"--Provided by publisher.

This book seeks to contribute to the understanding of social innovation and entrepreneurship by developing a conceptual instrument to help characterize different social innovations, from the viewpoint of their hybridity. This theoretical development builds on insights accumulated in the existing literature on social innovation and entrepreneurship. The main focus, however, is on social innovation.

This paper reviews how women in the developing world access and use information and communication technology (ICT). It examines the discourse and controversies surrounding the digital gender divide, including links to poverty and illiteracy. Major themes concerning women and ICTs are explored, such as women in the ICT workforce, how girls and women relate differently to ICT, and opportunities and barriers for women in science and technology in general. Current research relating to gender and ICT is often country-specific and is more prevalent in developed countries than in developing countries. This paper suggests where additional research is needed on barriers to women s entry and access to ICT. The overall objective of this paper is to influence policy dialogue around women and ICT for development by raising awareness of the digital gender divide. Economic opportunity for women in ICT will not be realized until policies address gender considerations and ensure that ICT investment contributes to more sustainable and equitable development.