Digital divide: The amazing facts at the bop

About four billion or 69% of world population survives on an average per head daily earning of less than or equal to USD 2 or in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, annual income of USD 1500 or less. Such income group is referred to as the Base or Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP). It is conceivable that people belonging to the BoP struggle for their existence with the little income that they have. Therefore, as per conventional wisdom, they are less likely to care for adopting Information and Communication Technology (ICT) which is apparently expensive and not directly related to their basic needs for survival. In this paper, we present some facts that amazingly contradict this somewhat naive perception. We argue that people at the BOP are not any less curious about ICT than the higher income groups. If a technology is properly focused to the needs of this group and is marketed with an appropriate business model, the people at BoP are willing to spend even more money for the state of the art technology. Our assertions are based on literature review and field survey that we conducted during January and February 2008 in the BOP population of our representative country Bangladesh.