Unique Village Phone initiative

The internationally acclaimed Village Phone Program (VPP) is a unique initiative providing telecommunications services in rural areas all over Bangladesh, covering even the remote offshore islands in the Bay of Bengal.

Managed by Grameen Telecom in cooperation with Grameen Bank and Grameenphone, presently there are more than 265,000 VP operators in over 50,000 villages in 439 upazillas of the country. Amongst GP subscribers, VP operators yielded the highest average revenue per month.

Commencing its operation in March 1997, the VPP is a unique initiative to provide telecommunications facilities in remote, rural areas where no such service was available before. It has brought about a quiet revolution in mobile telephony in Bangladesh, by putting cell phones in the hands of the rural poor, many of them women, who had never seen a telephone before.

The Village Phones work as an owner-operated pay phone. It has created a good income-earning opportunity for the VP operators, mostly poor women who are borrower members of Grameen Bank. Typically, a member of Grameen Bank takes a loan to buy a handset and a GP subscription and she is trained by Grameen Telecom on how to operate it.

VPP has received many international awards while it has also been extensively featured in the international media over the years and documented by researchers both at home and abroad. It was given the “GSM in the Community Award” by the GSM Association at the GSM Congress in Cannes, France in February 2000. It also received the “Commonwealth Innovation Award” in 2003 and the “Petersburg Prize” awarded by the Gateway Foundation in 2005.

The Village Phone Program has also been replicated in a number of countries including Uganda and Rewanda in Africa.

Research studies have found that the introduction of Village Phones has made a “tremendous” social and economic impact in the rural areas, creating a “substantial consumer surplus” for the users. It directly increases the household income of the Village Phone operator.

Findings showed that this modern technology has increased the social standing of the Village Phone Lady. The various studies have found that one of the most important contributions of Village Phones was to make market information accessible to all. It has also substantially empowered the women from the rural households, who can now access numerous services provided by the government and non-government organisations through a simple telephone call from her village.