Telecoms operators in mainland Europe may be pulling up phone boxes, télécabines, Telephonhaüschen and cabinas telefónicas by the thousand, but in the developing world it is a very different story.

Home to two thirds of the world's population, the nations of Africa, northern and south-east Asia, Central and Latin America and the Pacific are so lacking in connectivity to basic services that analysts estimate around half the world's population have never made a phone call.

In the face of outmoded or non-existent infrastructure, prohibitively high tariffs and waiting lists for connection that can be as long as 10 years, many development agencies are finding that public communications facilities - from privately run internet cafés to publicly funded community telecentres - are providing the answer to the long-standing problem of bringing poor and remote communities into the information age.

Ernst Larsen, publisher of the first global directory of cybercafes (www.netcafeguide.com), reports a boom in internet kiosks in the developing world, where local entrepreneurs are rushing to meet demand for online connectivity in communities where home PCs (and mobile phones) are well beyond the means of even relatively well-off families.

"A strong decline in the US since 1997 means many cities there now have few or no public internet cafes, but we're seeing real growth in poorer countries, where students and the middle class lack the income to get access at home, but still want to use the net for e-mail and information," he says.

He adds that demand for public internet resources is often spurred by their ability to provide freedom of information for people living under highly restrictive regimes, allowing them to surf in relative anonymity away from the prying eyes of government.

In basic service provision, meanwhile, another privately-backed initiative is proving effective in bringing dial-tone to rural dwellers in one of the world's poorest countries. Bangladesh-based Grameen Phone, launched in 1997 by micro-credit pioneer Muhammad Yunus, runs a programme by which local entrepreneurs can purchase mobile phones through a lease-buy scheme. Grameen Phone recipients then set up shop as a Village Pay Phone, reselling airtime to local villagers and passing on incoming messages from callers outside the community.

In the public sector, meanwhile, emphasis is on deployment of larger-scale community telecentres, a concept pioneered in remote northern Sweden in the mid-1980s, as a means of providing affordable computing and communications resources to isolated communities.

In developing countries, a plethora of government agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and others, are all reporting considerable success in helping local communities establish affordable shared resources.

These provide anything from a simple, reliable phone line to full phone, fax, internet, distance learning and telemedicine capabilities.

In Ghana, which can boast only 0.4 telephones for every 100 inhabitants, a joint initiative between two US-based organisations will shortly launch an innovative solar-powered wireless telecentre, providing facilities ranging from simple telephone to online education programmes linking Ghanaian students to academic institutions in the US.

Ghana Computer Literacy and Distance Education (GhaCLAD), a non-profit development foundation, and Greenstar, a for-profit organisation committed to developing sustainable health, education and environmental programmes in the developing world, launched the pilot phase of the new Asante Akim centre in January.

Based at Patriensah near Lake Volta, the centre will be ready for business by mid year, providing phone and internet connectivity and serving as a focal point for local initiatives such as literacy programmes, community health screening, telemedicine, employment training, and access to basic, non-formal and academic education resources.

"Many developing countries suffer an erratic electricity supply, so the use of solar energy is key - it's cheap, reliable and, after the initial investment, very inexpensive to maintain," says Osei Darkwa, assistant professor at the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois and one of the champions of the project.

"This centre will play a vital role in the economic future of the community, enabling development of e-commerce capabilities to help local merchants, and bringing advanced education to the 70 per cent of students who qualify for tertiary training but who can't be accommodated by Ghana's over-burdened universities.

"In the Information Age, distance need no longer limit development - building the right skills will enable people everywhere to participate in and benefit from the global economy."

On the other side of the world, the ITU has been busy implementing a major Latin American success story, through a partnership with the Argentine government that has seen 1,000 community telecentres established in remote villages across the country.

Yoshio Utsumi, ITU Secretary General, says an important part of the project is the creation of 100 virtual classrooms for distance learning. "Capacity building within local communities is a vital element of these projects," says Mr Utsumi. "By doubling as training institutions and e-commerce hubs, telecentres have the potential to rapidly raise the living standards of local people."

Further north, the World Bank's infoDev programme is implementing its own network of six community information centres in the rural province of Cajamarca, Peru, providing local people with access to PCs, IP telephony and fax services, printers, photocopiers and CD writers, wireless and rural telephones and even TV, video and broadcast equipment.

The centres levy a small charge for more advanced services, but offer training and access virtually for free to target users, who count among the most disadvantaged in the country.

"These centres enable communities to explore better ways to improve their quality of life and to generate additional income. This is the really important development impact expected from this project," says Rafael Hernandez, infoDev ICT Management Specialist, who says regular users now include students, teachers, agricultural producers, community leaders and local entrepreneurs.

UNDP's commitment to developing shared public communications services includes telecentre projects in Honduras and Jamaica, where the emphasise is on training as a means of maximising the usefulness of telecoms in communities unfamiliar with the tools of the electronic age.

The Honduras centre currently trains around 100 people a day in using e-mail and the internet, while in Jamaica, where less than 2 per cent of the local population has their own computer, six centres have been opened in local libraries and teaching centres, where they can take advantage of existing skills and infrastructure.

In India, where more than one quarter of all telephones are found in the four largest cities, UNDP is also working with the Department of Telecommunications to develop an extensive network of rural public call offices, with the aim of bringing STD and ISDN facilities within 1km of most local communities.

But is simple access to telecommunications enough to end the poverty cycle that continues to blight the lives of so many of the world's people? "The link between a country's teledensity and its economic prosperity was conclusively established almost 20 years ago," says ITU's Mr Utsumi, whose recently launched Digital Divide initiative calls for information and communication technologies to receive a higher priority in all economic development programmes.

"With advanced technologies allowing telecoms networks to deliver other important services like education, healthcare, and online trading, access to communications is more vital than ever. We're convinced these projects can and will make a real difference to the lives of people around the world."