January 19, 2007
Updated 15:13:40 (Mla time)
MANILA, Philippines -- Poor Filipinos living off a shoestring budget nonetheless spend about $2 a month on mobile telecommunications, according to a recent study done in five developing countries in Asia.
Hoping to understand the telecommunications use of people from the "bottom of the pyramid" of socioeconomic classification, "Teleuse on a Shoestring 2: A study of telecom use at the bottom of the pyramid in Asia" revealed that telecommunications access was prevalent even among poor Filipinos.
"We found out that in Philippines' poorest households, there were at least one phone available," Ayesha Zainudeen, assistant to the executive director and researcher of LIRNEAsia, which presented the study's results, told reporters.
About 70 percent of the poorest Filipinos have access to a phone, in particular a mobile phone from a friend or a household member, Zainudeen said at the Communication Policy Research (CPR) South conference in Manila.
The study found that Filipinos with incomes of about $50 a month or more plan to buy a mobile phone.
The main barrier to owning a phone in the Philippines is still cost, it said.
"The cost of making calls is expected to be higher among the Filipino D and E users, especially for mobile phones," Zainudeen said.
With the Philippines' poorest expecting a high cost from making calls or sending text messages, a "culture of cost-cutting" has become evident in the Philippines, the study showed.
Such a culture has driven the demand for second-hand mobile handsets, pre-paid services (the highest in tandem with Pakistan), and text messaging, which is a perceived as a cheaper way to communicate. The poorest Filipinos use text messaging at least once a day.
Rohan Samarajiva, executive director of LIRNEAsia, however, stressed that the mobile phone is emerging as the "primary transactional device" of people in developing countries.
The study involved face-to-face interviews with 8,660 respondents, ages 18 to 60 years in five countries, including India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Thailand. Fieldwork was done from June to July 2006. It also had focused group discussions to get qualitative data.
For the Philippines, the study had 1,100 respondents.
About 40 percent of the estimated 89 million Filipinos belong to a population under the poverty line, figures collated by the study showed. Teledensity is also at 41 per 100 people in the Philippines.
The study is done with ACNielsen in the Philippines, and funded by the Infrastructure Development and Finance Company of Canada, in partnership with the International Development Research Centre of the CRDI in Canada.
http://services.inquirer.net/express/07/01/20/html_output/xmlhtml/20070119-44418-xml.html
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