Anand Giridharadas writes about the vitality of cell phones in developing nations, and the implications for highly-developed nations like the US, where cell phone use is not as well-entrenched.

From Kenya to Columbia to South Africa – the kind of places that have built cellphone towers precisely to leapfrog past the expense of building wired networks, which have linked Americans for a century…cellphones are becoming the truly universal technology. The number of mobile subscriptions in the world is expected to pass five billion this year, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a trade group. That would mean more human beings today have access to a cellphone than the United Nations says have access to a clean toilet.

He cites the greater rate of dropped calls in the US and the less-prevalent use of text messaging as things that surprised him after spending time in India.

There is a question about whether the United States, which gained so much from the Internet revolution, will similarly profit from the entry of billions more people from the developing world into a massive worldwide middle class — consumers now but not yet rich, with a simple cellphone and a less-is-more sensibility.