Grameenphone CellBazaar wins Global Mobile Award

Grameenphone CellBazaar wins Global Mobile Award
CellBazaar, an innovative market-access service from Grameenphone Ltd., has won the 3GSMA Global Mobile Award 2008, in the category of "Best Use of Mobile for Social & Economic Development."

The 3GSMA Global Mobile Awards - the 'Oscars' of an industry that serves a third of the world's population - represents a stage for all players in the mobile world to attract the attention of their peers and the global media. The award was announced at a gala award dinner last night on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress currently being held in the Spanish city of Barcelona.
Grameenphone CellBazaar is a "great initiative - full marks for self-sustainability. This grass root level initiative is not only for operators to make money but for rural folks to sell and trade their goods and increased price transparency and help for the illiterate is also available. It has clear environmental benefits through reduced travel," the Award Judges said in their citation.
"CellBazaar is a great example of Grameenphone's continued leadership in simple, smart and customer relevant innovation," noted CEO Anders Jensen. "This award along with the awards GP previously won for HealthLine and Village Phone are a global recognition of the spirit of innovation within Grameenphone. I congratulate CellBazaar and its excellent team for this achievement."
The CellBazaar concept was developed at the MIT Media Lab by Kamal Quadir and he later founded a company to establish a partnership with Grameenphone. Using Grameenphone CellBazaar, buyers and sellers are able to trade basic goods (eg, rice, fish, motorcycle, used goods) from their mobile phones, bringing the benefits of information exchange, community networking and one-to-many trading to a previously unwired rural population.
Grameenphone CellBazaar is a user-generated market, accessible via mobile phone or computers in Bangladesh. It is a low cost, pay-as-you-use service where users pay the standard SMS or GPRS charges for accessing the service. There are no monthly or posting fees.
"Each year as the influence of mobile communications spreads further to enhance more and more aspects of people's lives, the scope of the Awards become greater, and the competition becomes more intense as a result. Because the mobile world is such an amazing universe of opportunities, its gravitational forces are pulling other industries into its realm-internet, finance, advertising, music and film. Many of tonight's winners reflect that premise, and as we celebrate 20 years since the foundations for global mobile communication were laid, they demonstrate not only how far we have come, but also the limitless possibilities of where innovation and inspiration can take us in the years ahead," observed GSM Association CEO Rob Conway.
The other four nominees in the same category with CellBazaar were: Grameen Foundation for Village Phone Direct; Motorola for solar & wind powered GSM macro cell site; Nokia Siemens Networks for Village Connection; and Safaricom for M-PESA.

It should be mentioned that last year in February, Grameenphone was presented with the 3GSMA Global Mobile Award 2007 for its HealthLine service in the category of "Best Use of Mobile for Social & Economic Development," and was awarded the "GSM in the Community Award" for its Village Phone program in February 2000.

Information DepartmentGrameenphone Ltd.Phone: 9882990email: info@grameenphone.com