Some initial data

[Steve Song]

Hi all,

I've compiled some initial data on 26 African countries, creating a
ratio between minimum wage (mostly from ILO stats) and mobile phone
voice and SMS charges. More info in a blog post at
http://manypossibilities.net/2009/11/fair-mobile-some-data/

The full ILO data is here:
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/condtrav/pdf/wagedatabase09.xls

The mobile data was sourced country by country from the websites of
the dominant operators in the countries. In the table in the blog
post, each data point on voice cost links back to its source.

Love to hear some impressions, corrections, suggestions.

Cheers... Steve

P.S. The graphs in the blog came from the impressive GoogleLabs
Fusion Tables project at http://tables.googlelabs.com/DataSource?dsrcid=90219/90219

[Steve Song]

I had some useful feedback from Niti Bhan who points to a Jan
Chipchase presentation which indicates that people at the BoP work an
average of 6 days a week/16 hour days. This obviously changes the
numbers somewhat.

Having said that, I think there is a deeper problem with the ratio.
It is easy to see that things suck in Burundi in terms of call
affordability for the poor but it is not clear to the casual observer
whether the problem is very low wages or high mobile charges or both.
An idea is germinating for me in how to represent this better but I
need a couple more days to formulate it.

-Steve

On Nov 9, 10:14 pm, Steve Song <stephen.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've compiled some initial data on 26 African countries, creating a
> ratio between minimum wage (mostly from ILO stats) and mobile phone

> voice and SMS charges.  More info in a blog post athttp://manypossibilities.net/2009/11/fair-mobile-some-data/
>
> The full ILO data is here:http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/condtrav/pdf/wagedatabas...