Travelling by public means on a taxi (matatu) in Kampala especially in the evening when people are returning home from work, you will most certainly come across a man or woman speaking in their mobile phone for an entire journey (and you are sure to run into a traffic jam at some point) lasting 30 minutes or more.The picture I have painted is a far cry to the days when as a young journalist, I had just acquired my very first mobile phone back in 2002. I bought my first phone at a time when the penetration of the gadget was just beginning to take off in Uganda – mobile telephony having been brought to the country by Celtel (now Zain) in 1994. One of the major stumbling blocks to its acquisition by the majority had just been consigned to history by the newest operator then. Uganda Telecom with its Mango service had just decided not to charge a monthly subscription fee for its service to the relief of anyone who did not already possess a mobile phone. Before Uganda Telecom came onto the market, the incumbent operators MTN Uganda and Celtel charged a monthly ‘Service Fee’. At the time, it was only the rich and privileged who could afford a handset, pay for the monthly service fee and the talk time, which was charged in US Dollars by one of the operators. In a nutshell, a mobile phone and the things one needed before it could function were costly.