Dear FC,

Re: “Unplanned Obsolescence” (September), I wonder if you don’t miss the forest for the trees. The big story is that Bangladesh has increased its phone penetration from 1 per 500 people in the mid-‘90s to 1 per 7 people today. The phone ladies, whose income and profits are surely declining as noted, and who represent at most 3% of GrameenPhone subscribers, are not the raison d’etre of GrameenPhone; distributing tens of millions of phones throughout the country is the company’s mission and has been from the start. Utilizing Grameen Bank’s network in 60,000+ villages was merely a way to deliver phones into remote rural areas where there was and still is no reliable electricity or roads. The fact that the foreign investors behind GrameenPhone (Telenor of Norway, Marubeni of Japan, and Gonofone of New York) endorsed this strategy while also perceiving its developmental impact in lifting people out of poverty is one of the most positive business stories in recent memory. The fact that the distribution method is no longer needed in some villages is testament to the company’s overall success and the competition it has spawned. If GrameenPhone had not teamed with Grameen Bank to distribute phones to villages, and had not agreed to sell minutes in bulk at a huge discount to phone ladies, it never would have built out a national network, and Bangladesh today might have a largely urban-centric phone system, rather than the country-wide system it enjoys.  The Western media has built Nobel laureates Grameen Bank and Muhammad Yunus into icons, and in typical fashion now looks to knock them off their lofty perch. There is no doubt some reason to do so, although it is a mistake to treat GrameenPhone and Grameen Bank as the same entity when they have radically different agendas. That apart, a business magazine should also keep its eyes on the bottom line, and in this case that would show a poor country that has embraced information technology at the grassroots, a Norwegian company with the guts to invest heavily in such a poor country and reap the rewards, and a GDP growth rate that is pushing 7% per annum.