Industry Challenges and Policy Barriers in Adoption of Mobile Value Added Services in Remote Islands: The Case of Fiji

While mobile phones are making significant inroads in many developing countries, little remains known about the policy and infrastructure constraints that affect their use for growth of micro enterprises. We address this gap in the literature. The uniqueness of our study also lies in the focus on women micro entrepreneurs in a remote Pacific island country. To obtain both the demand-side and supply-side perspectives, we conducted semi-structured interviews of 74 women micro entrepreneurs and ten key informants from the Fijian Government, mobile network operators (MNOs), and financial institutions. We found that appropriate policy framework, supporting infrastructure and appropriate ecosystem are required for rapid uptake of mobile value added services by women owned micro enterprises in Fiji. A significant number of women micro entrepreneurs were willing to embrace mobile value added services if these were made available with adequate security and at reasonable cost.Milind