ITU 06 diary - Big ideas for developing economies - and a spot of mobile porn

Sunday saw the opening ceremony of the ITU conference. Unfortunately, at the time, I was still being hurtled through the air at hundreds of miles per hour courtesy of British Airways.

The ITU speaker for the event was professor Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize winner and a managing director at Grameen Bank - a financial institution that specialises in micro-loans in developing economies. Yunus announced yesterday that he'll be teaming up with some heavyweights of tech including Cisco and Qualcomm to launch an 'ICT empowerment network', using the same micro-financing model and the experience of tech companies to help more people earn sustainable incomes.

One tells me that a friend is involved with a mobile porn start-up, selling video content and premium rate calls to live ladies.

It's an idea that's already making a big difference and it'll be interesting to see if tech can help out. Another man with a fascinating vision, an eye on the developing economies and sackfuls of big name partners is Nicholas Negroponte, head of the One Laptop Per Child project, responsible for the $100 laptop.

He's speaking today at the ITU Telecom World and, fingers crossed, I'll be getting to interview him too, with the wind blowing in the right direction - unsurprisingly, he's a hard man to pin down.

Despite the raging jetlag, I managed to meet up with some fellow mobile journalists and analysts. One tells me that a friend is involved with a mobile porn start-up, selling video content and premium rate calls to live ladies.

Said friend has decided to move his call centre from Macau to Hong Kong, saying labour costs are significantly cheaper there. Mobile adult content, it seems, is no different to other industries when it comes to offshoring.