Mobile Phones: Like any Other ICT? - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 92

Chapter 6
Mobile Phones: Like
any Other ICT?
The Case of Greece and its
Adoption of Mobile Phones from
a Socio-Cultural Perspective

Panayiota Tsatsou
Swansea University, UK

ABSTRACT

This chapter explores mobile phones and how they have been received in juxtaposition with the Internet
and in close association with socio-cultural contexts of life. By examining the Greek case and its particu-
larities, the chapter provides some sense of why different Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs), such as mobile phones and the Internet, might be received and adopted differently by people living
in the same socio-cultural context (at the national level). In the case of Greece, statistical and histori-
cal data confirm the contrasting receptions of mobile phones and the Internet but empirical evidence
is lacking to explain the exceptionally high adoption rates of mobile phones in the country. Thus, the
chapter reports on original empirical evidence obtained in elite actors' interviews and focus groups of
ordinary people to explain the contrasting ways mobile phones and the Internet have been received in the
country. On the basis of these empirical findings, the chapter finds that certain socio-cultural contexts,
such as that of Greece, favour mobile phones more than the Internet, thus making mobile telephony a
distinctive case of ICT.

INTRODUCTION

more or less the same framework as any other
ICT, with Internet, mobile telephony and other
information society indicators being commonly
viewed from an economic and market perspective
(OECD, 2002).
This chapter argues that mobile telephony
is a distinctive ICT due to its particular techni-
cal features and its exceptionally high degree
of social acceptance (penetration) compared to

In general, Internet indicators are relied on more
than those of mobile telephony for evaluating
the progress of the information society (OECD,
2002). On the other hand, mobile telephony is
approached as an ICT that can be positioned in