Report
It is often claimed that access to telecommunication facilities is a propeller of economic prosperity in developing countries. Mobile phones in particular are considered pivotal in encouraging growth. Prahalad (2004), in “Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” asserts that defining change in the world’s poorest economies will be led by access to communications and not through the evolution of IT as was the case in the advanced countries of the world. This paper examines perceptions of affordability amongst low income telecommunication users in India and Sri Lanka and the effects of changes in service costs on their usage patterns.