Ideas change everything

How mobile phones can fight poverty

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Iqbal Quadir |

TEDGlobal 2005

• July 2005

Iqbal Quadir tells how his experiences as a kid in poor Bangladesh, and later as a banker in New York, led him to start a mobile phone operator connecting 80 million rural Bangladeshi -- and to become a champion of bottom-up development.

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Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

Iqbal Quadir tells how his experiences as a kid in poor Bangladesh, and later as a banker in New York, led him to start a mobile phone operator connecting 80 million rural Bangladeshi -- and to become a champion of bottom-up development.

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

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About the speaker

Founder, GrameenPhone

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Iqbal Quadir is an advocate of business as a humanitarian tool. With GrameenPhone, he brought the first commercial telecom services to poor areas of Bangladesh. His latest project will help rural entrepreneurs build power plants.

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Since the Talk: The case for bottom-up innovation

Eight years after his talk was given, the economist looks to train the next generation of grassroots entrepreneurs.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

Read our curation guidelines.