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WIDER Research Paper No. 2004/13
Diffusion of Digital Mobile Telephony: Are Developing Countries Different?
Petri Rouvinen
February 2004
Abstract
Factors determining the diffusion of digital mobile telephony across 200
developed and
developing countries in the 1990s are studied with the aid of a Gompertz
model. The
market size and network effects are found to play more important roles
in the
developing countries; there is also more need for complementing
innovations in, for
example, financial and payment systems. Even though the developing
countries have
disadvantages, being late entrants in digital mobile telephony is to
their advantage and
promotes cross-country convergence. Overall digital technologies are
best seen as
equalizers, and thus the divide is rather socio-economic or analog than
digital.
Keywords: mobile telephony, technology diffusion, Gompertz model, developing
countries
