It's the Cell Phone Stupid.

The Economist article on the digital divide raised some interesting points.

1) World organizations like the U.N. are trying to treat the digital divide as one large problem, instead of looking at the underlying causes of the divide like poverty.

2) The real key to closing the digital divide lies in cell phones, not the internet.

The U.N. is undertaking a project which aims to spread the internet to rural parts of the world. Through the "Digital Solidarity Fund," the U.N. hopes to increase prosperity among many poor countries by closing the gap between the haves and haves-nots in technology.

This is the wrong approach according to the Economist because the internet alone will not cure poverty, illiteracy, hunger, or other problems. The Economist states that you can't build prosperity from the top-down method.

Instead, they advocate building infrastructure from the ground up. And the perfect place to start is with the cell phones.

Almost 77 percent of the world lives within range of a mobile phone network. Cell phones are popular because anyone can use them - rich, poor, literate, and illiterate can all communicate via cell phone. Another advantage is that cell phones do not rely on a dedicated power supply, allowing users to take their phones into the most remote and rural areas of the world on a battery.

We've already experienced a cell phone revolution in this country. Cell phone use is up 300 percent in the United States and with over 159 million subscribers. Having already tapped out most of the domestic population, cell phone companies are targeting children under 12 with small cell phones as educational/safety devices.

Cell phones seem to be the wave of the future with new features like steaming video set to arrive en masse soon. It would be smart of the U.N. to take a bottom-up approach and work to install the latest cellular technology in the underdeveloped world instead of pursuing a flawed plan for internet access.