1. No telephones or modern infrastructure in the villages of Bangladesh, 2. Villagers had to travel distances for work or sending important messages 3. A population of 120 million with an average per capita income of $220, Bangladesh had just two phones per 1,000 people (compared with nine per 1,000 people in India) 4, the most basic fixed-line networks were expensive: it cost $2,000 for the state-owned Bangladesh Telegraph and Telecom Board (BTT8) to install each new line, for which BTTB received over $600 in annual fees, in addition to a $500 set-up fee. 5. GrameenPhone, the for-profit company, held the cellular license, built and operated the network, and marketed it to urban consumers. 6. Grameen Telecom, a non-profit affiliate of the Grameen Bank, bought bulk air-time from GrameenPhone and resold it to individual village phone operators (VPOs) and provided customer service. Grameen Bank provided loans to VPOs to purchase the handsets and subscribe to the service 7. Initially, the predominant economic impact of the phones was to facilitate remittances between poor villagers and their family members working abroad or in Bangladesh’s cities by reducing the risk of remitting cash 8. Village vegetable growers reported that the phones aided them in making appropriate production decisions