Can mobiles close the digital divide?
By Robin Hicks | 27 April 2010
It is often argued that no technology in history has been as effective at fighting poverty as the mobile phone. According to the World Bank, an extra ten mobiles per 100 people in a typical poor country will add 0.8 per cent to GDP growth.
The humble handset has given disadvantaged people access to information with which they can build businesses or increase the productivity of their crops in geographically isolated areas, such as remotes islands in Indonesia and the Philippines, and where there are dodgy roads, unreliable public transport, and disrupted landlines.
The mobile phone can provide an almost instant economic shot in the arm, which disperses in a self-sustaining bottom-up way. This eases the pressure on government to stimulate the economy on its own, which is welcome news for economies still under the clouds of slow economic growth.
Citizen services are now increasingly available on mobile phones, with both the public and private sector playing a role in their delivery. Tata Consultancy Services provides a platform for farmers in India to receive personalised information from a database compiled by local agricultural experts, for a small fee.
During 
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It was interesting to see Google and Baidu on the same panel.
In this session, we have both agency and advertisers’ view from Celia, VP of FocusMedia China, Jason, VP of Omnicom group, Shaun Rein, MD of China market research group, and Eric, chief innovation officer of Agenda group. 
