There are a billion people in the world with an average income of one or two dollars a month. Even more surprisingly, a significant proportion of them spend up to twenty per cent of their income on mobile phones.
Do mobile phones keep people in poverty? Quite the opposite, according to figures produced by the GSMA. It argues that giving mobile phone access to the billion people who struggle for a living in the developing nations could help them multiply their earning potential fivefold. A double productivity and efficiency whammy would see their earning rise to ten dollars a month and save them six dollar a month on administration.
Most mobile users in developing nations have to share phones. Take Norman Muli, a carpenter in Kenya. It’s bad enough that he has to take time out to get his mobile charged up. But he loses even more time because he has to share his mobile with his wife (who sells clothes), daughter (a student) and his daughter’s boyfriend.
Movirtu has created a system that gives Norman greater accessibility, which enables him to talk to clients more quickly. Consequently, he’s picking up more jobs.
Movirtu’s innovation is to create unique personal numbers that can be assigned to anyone. Phone calls for this number can be made, or received, from any handset – provided Norman remember the pin code.
It’s an easy system for operators to implement. Each operator simply inserts a board into their exchange, and the provision and management of numbers is pretty much automated.
In February, Movirtu plans to launch Mxinfo, an information service for subscribers. Health, farming and education intelligence will be fed into the developing economy, helping its workers to make better decisions and prosper more successfully. 
Movirtu was founded in 2008, but it has already picked up a Social Innovation award.
“I spent 20 year doing everything in mobile comms. Text messaging, short codes, premium services, you name it. Now we’re re-inventing mobiles so the poor can profit from them,” says Movirtu founder and CEO Nigel Waller, “it’s great to be doing something so fulfilling.”
There’s some way to go yet. Developing nations have limited coverage by the national grid, so base stations are rare in rural areas. Similarly, users can’t get their phones charged easily. The GSMA and all the local mobile operators are slowly addressing this problem, by providing their own electricity to power base stations, using solar panels, wind turbines and fuel cells.