Worst of the Week: The Third World and the future of wireless

Hello!
And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWirelessNews.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
So I think the future of the wireless industry has nothing to do with mobile TV. It doesn’t involve mobile social networking, full-track music downloads or touchscreens. In fact, it has nothing to do with America at all. I think the real future of the wireless industry is being invented in places like Kenya, India and Uganda.
Now, like any other true, red-blooded American, I take pride in the fact that I don’t know or care about anything outside of the borders of the good old U.S. of A. However, covering the wireless industry sometimes requires me to know about such places. It’s a tough part of the job, but someone has to do it.
Anyway, it seems that there’s a bunch of cool stuff happening in the worldwide wireless industry, stuff that has nothing to do with Americans or America. What exactly am I talking about? Check out this excellent New York Times story about wireless in the Third World.
According to the article, written by Sara Corbett and published earlier this month, there are amazing wireless applications springing up in some of the world’s poorest nations:
–Fishermen off the coast of Kerala in southern India are calling prospective buyers before they even get to shore, thereby boosting their profits by an average of 8%.
–In Kenya, people can use text messaging to anonymously ping health experts with questions about taboo subjects like AIDS, breast cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.
–And in South Africa, the Philippines and elsewhere, carriers are beginning to support mobile banking applications, giving people who have never had access to any kind of financial institution the ability to transfer funds and make electronic payments.
It’s applications like these that I think best highlight the total nonsense that the U.S. wireless market seems obsessed with. While AT&T Mobility in the United States launches a service that can broadcast stupid movies like “Resident Evil,” Motorola in Namibia tests wind- and solar-powered base stations. Which is more important? And which is the better financial investment?
Now, I’m not saying the innovation currently taking place in the United States and other developed nations is useless. I’m just as excited about mobile access to sales-force applications as the next guy. What I’m saying is that maybe the 3G iPhone isn’t as big a deal as the Nokia concept device — detailed in the New York Times article — that allows users to manually recharge a phone battery with a little spinning crank in around 15 minutes.
Now that’s neato.
OK! Enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this Worst of the Week column. And now, some extras:
–RadioShack’s struggles continue; it seems the retailer is having trouble selling postpaid service from Sprint Nextel. And here I thought RadioShack had an iron-clad business selling remote-controlled racecars and watch batteries.
–Rogers in Canada announced it will begin selling the iPhone, which brings Apple’s flagship cellphone product to our northern neighbor. I’m a little sleepy this morning, so please insert your own joke about Canada here. Thank you.
–It seems there’s a notable and growing dust-up involving the management practices of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin. I simply can’t believe an appointee of President Bush could be accused of mismanagement.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at mdano@crain.com.