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One approach to universal access (UA), which springs from the user side of the network—even though the first international case and several current initiatives involve leading mobile operators—is the village phone concept. This has emerged in several forms around the world, sometimes organised by a Micro-Finance Institution (MFI), sometimes by a private enterprise, or sometimes by the operator with financial partners.

The village phone concept began with the launch of the village phone programme in rural Bangladesh in 1997 as an initiative of the Grameen Bank. The Grameen Bank provides impoverished village women with financial support to develop sustainable income generating activities. In 2006, Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the bank, and the Grameen Bank itself, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below."

Women clients of the Grameen Bank who show the initiative to become local Village Phone Operators (VPOs), receive training and are loaned funds to purchase a mobile phone set-up (phone with special in-built pricing software) suitable for rural areas, as well as airtime credits. Through the network of VPOs, vending affordable airtime denominations and facilitating individual calls, residents enjoy better access to communication services.

The success of the programme at generating sustainable business and social empowerment opportunities for women, and high performance in the recovery of loan disbursements, led to the replication (with variations) of Grameen's initial Bangladesh model, in the African countries of Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda.

At the core of a generic village phone programme is a viable business model for local entrepreneurs (women and increasingly men) to provide telecommunications services to their community.

The entrepreneurs are offered a telephone operator business kit consisting of a mobile phone, external antenna (in the African cases), business management materials, a marketing poster, and usually some introductory training via the telecommunications service provider alone or in partnership with supporting organisations, which include microfinance entities, banks and non-government organisations (NGOs).