Mrs. Parveen Akhtar is the Village Phone operator in Araiora village, Kotwali thana, Comilla. She has kindly granted permission to use her image on materials related to this case study. This permission was obtained through a process which may be of interest to people looking at the significance of telecommunications in rural and remote areas: researchers at TeleCommons Development Group in Canada sent an email message to the project team leader in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The team leader then called Mrs. Akhtar on her Village Phone and requested permission to use her photo. Permission was received and the team leader sent an email message back to Canada relaying the news. Thus, a task which may have previously taken days or weeks to complete without access to a telephone was instead achieved in only 16 hours.

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