This one won’t be centered in the United States.

The first internet revolution happened above all in the United States.

That was where the tech companies, the fast connections and the venture capital were.

This time it’s different.

• The projects that set out to cover entire U.S. cities like Philadelphia with wireless access have gone quiet.
• Call quality isn’t as good in much of the USA as it is in Europe or Asia. Call quality can be better in India than it is in New York.

The world’s largest mobile network operator

• Most Asians and Europeans discovered texting in 1997. Texting only went mainstream in the U.S. in 2008.
• Similarly, 2.5G data networks can work as well in the rural Third World as they do in major U.S. cities. You can be in a village on a remote Indonesian island. No cars. No infrastructure. But your BlackBerry will still work.

So

As a result, the mobile revolution is not localized – it’s happening everywhere:

• The most discriminating phone users are in Hong Kong, where handsets are sold unlocked, contract-free and ready to go.
• Sending money by cellphone is happening first in Kenya. Mobile minutes have become a widely traded currency, and a phone-based system known as M-PESA has become the payment system of choice.

In 2005, the Motorola RAZR was a sexy $400 phone for New Yorkers. By 2007, every taxi driver in Shanghai had one. Technology can get cheaper fast.

• Building payment card functionality into cellphones is happening in Singapore and the UK, and has been commonplace in Japan for years.
• High definition voice calls are already alive and well – in Moldova.
• The Obama campaign iPhone app arrived too late to impact the US election much. Cellphones were used better in South Africa’s 2009 election, where the ANC databased and sent picture messages to 33 million cellphones.
• In Germany, Lufthansa have replaced paper tickets with barcodes sent to their passengers’ phones.
• Low income isn’t a barrier because of the international reach of telecoms companies. For example, the biggest player in the Ukrainian mobile network operator market is a joint venture with Norway’s Telenor. This ensures that Ukraine, per capita GDP $3000, gets similar infrastructure to Norway, one of the most advanced cellphone countries in the world.

Third World first

Indeed, the cellphone-based internet may move faster in poorer countries than in the West.

Put a copper telephone wire into an advanced industrial country, and fifty years later that wire will still be there.

In a poorer country, that wire will have been dug up for scrap within a month.

This put poorer countries at a massive disadvantage during the fixed-line internet boom.

But this also means that the mobile internet is now their only internet in poorer countries.

So mobile innovation there may be faster.

This boom should be democratic

The cellphone-based internet boom could be the most democratic technological boom in history.

The last internet boom was, at its peak in 1999, about two hundred million rich people.

Only they could afford the kit.

With mobile, it’s different.

Half of the planet - three and a half billion people - has a cellphone.

Soon smart features will be on the $30 handsets all of them can afford.

And computing power will suddenly be in the hands of most of humanity.

So

This should be a wake-up call to entrepreneurs everywhere. This is the boom that will pull the world out of the recession:

• Projects to put laptop computers into poor communities have struggled because you need to be literate to use a computer, and 25% of humans aren’t. But people who can’t read use cellphones without problem.
• Past research by the London School of Economics has shown emerging countries grow 0.7% faster because of the economic empowerment voice calls from cellphones provide. Peasant farmers use them to get a better price for their corn; poor fishermen use them to trade with ports. Phone-based mobile computing power should make emerging countries grow even faster.