Roaming

Multimedia installation and research publication | Intersections 3 Exhibition, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, June 2008 | Transmediale Exhibition and Conference, House of World Cultures, Berlin, January – March, 2008 | Antonio Tapies Foundation, Barcelona, Spain, 2007 | “Pronto! On Telephony” Exhibition, Zurich, Switzerland, 2009

As wireless telephony industry boomed around the world throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, an innovative practice of public wireless telephony emerged in Ulaaanbaatar. In 2001, Mobicom and Mongol Telecom began selling CDMA wireless phones to families who were out of range of landline service. Some of these customers began developing their own business enterprises by selling time on their phones to other citizens and charging 100 tg per minute, twice as much as their own per minute fee. By 2007 there were 17,000 white phone workers on the streets of Ulaanbaatar selling wireless phone calls to passersby. They work day and night, summer and winter and some earn supplemental income by selling cigarettes, gum and coffee as well.