Bringing Cell Phones To the Third World

An anonymous reader tips a story about Denis O'Brien, a mobile phone entrepreneur whose goal is to spread cell phones throughout third-world countries. Quoting: "...O'Brien keeps pouring money into the world's poorest, most violent countries. His bet: Give phones to the masses and they'll fight your enemies for you. ...In Trinidad & Tobago, where the state mobile phone firm was dragging its feet on connecting Digicel calls to its own customers, O'Brien harangued government officials to speed things up, even phoning one Christmas night to complain. After the launch the state firm started dropping Digicel calls anyway, making its new competitor look bad. O'Brien took his case to the people, taking out ads in T&T's papers listing life 'Before Digicel' and 'After Digicel' and held a press conference. The state firm eventually relented. In its first four months Digicel bagged 600,000 customers and is narrowing the gap now with the state in market share."

Lethal Phones?

[bigtallmofo]

His bet: Give phones to the masses and they'll fight your enemies for you

I'm not sure I understand this. Do these phones shoot lasers or something?

Re:Interesting.

[MrNaz]

He's doing all of this with other people's money.

Does that sound like another business plan we've heard of? Maybe 7 or 8 years ago?

7 or 8 years ago? The US Federal Reserve has been around a lot longer than that, I think.

Awesome, now 3-rd world A-Holes

[AssTard]

That's just great The world needs starving folks to be running around yacking on there phones. That'll really encourage us to feed them. NOT.