While us in the west are not surprised by people having multiple cell phones for differetiating between work and personal calls as well as the ability to switch one off and concentrate on the other, the developing nations still requirephone connections in the rural areas. Cell phones of course changed all that and the infrastructure costs required to connect these places came down drastically. Now despite having cell phone connectivity, not everyone can afford buying the instruments.

Readers would recall that it is not surprising to come across in rural areas of India across people who carry with them cell phones and allow the villagers to place calls. A kind of walking around public call centre.

To further the idea, Nokia has integrated features such as call time tracking and multiple phone books on its latest handsets such as the Nokia 1200 and the Nokia 1208. To help manage airtime costs, the call-time tracking feature allows consumers and village phone entrepreneurs to preset a time or cost limit on individual calls, automatically ending the call after the limit has been reached.

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