A billion people lack electricity, but microgrids are powering up rural areas

  given the choice, how many people on here 
  would pick the phone over the toilet?

I'd rather have health insurance ($5000/year) instead of a basic cell phone plan ($200/year). But if I've only got $200/year to spend...

> I still find it slightly bemusing, that 2.5 billion people lack access to any sanitation [1], but only 1 billion lack electricity and access to a mobile phone

I don't find it too surprising. Having spent time in various poor countries, my intuition is that in many low-GDP countries electricity is a no-brainer for everyone, whereas home/neighborhood/public sanitation is not just a matter of disposable income but also of awareness/education/inertia..

You'd be surprised. I've been in a village in rural India where there were open sewers at the sides of the unpaved roads and there was still a massive mobile phone mast just next to it. Someone told me that 800 million people in India have mobile phones. I don't think it's that people are picking phones over toilets, I think it's that organising large infrastructure in a poor and corrupt environment is a lot harder than having a personal phone (that is important for employment and other communications) that uses fairly lightweight private infrastructure.

While it is unfortunate that hygiene is not prioritized I feel that both sanitation and energy are big problems and any attempt to solve either should be applauded.

I also think that making the people self sufficient in terms of energy might help in improving the lifestyle of these people.

At a glance, it all seems fairly logical to me.

Sanitation as we know it in the US at least depends on a lot of very expensive infrastructure with annual spending of about $100 per capita.

It's surely far cheaper to stand up a cell tower, backhaul and all than design and build out modern plumbing and sewage handling for the same coverage area.

If someone invents a toilet with similar upfront, recurring costs and ease of use to cellphones - the pipeless, waterless analog to a wireless phone - I'm sure they'd have no shortage of customers.

Difference is, mobile phones are consumed in abundance in wealthy countries, driving advancements in cost and efficiency which trickle down to make them widely available in poorer countries. As far as I can tell, there's no such driver for toilets as those who have them seem largely content.

Perhaps this will change if/when water conservation becomes a more serious topic.

For someone living in these conditions day in day out that has never known any other way of life and probably has limited knowledge about the benefits of sanitation to health in general cellphones have a much bigger and more obvious positive impact on daily life than a flush toilet.

A flush toilet is an incremental improvement on a solved problem. A cellphone on the other hand makes things possible that were unthinkable before it esp. since there probably aren't any landline phone or telegraph networks in a lot of these place.

If I were living in a hut using a bucket and the ditch as my toilet and you came to me and said do you want this phone or this flush toilet I'm pretty sure I would take the phone in a heart beat.

You can pee or poo wherever there is a bush. I have gone through your two links (and also things they linked to) and I am not saying that lack of toilets/sanitation is not a real issue, but from what I am seeing in those articles, it is a problem where you have a concentrated population and inadequate infrastructure of that sort. It isn't necessarily a problem in very rural areas. For very rural areas, adding a smidgeon of electricity and a phone can be a hugely revolutionizing thing. Lack of a toilet may not be a pressing problem for some of the places getting these "microgrids."

I think it is important to make that distinction. A tiny village getting a tiny microgrid and a few cell phones joins the 21st century. Getting a toilet isn't necessarily that kind of step up for them. The lack of a toilet is a problem for areas with sufficient population density that they need city type infrastructure. Some of these places simply do not need that, but do benefit hugely from electricity and phones.

> Obviously we've the luxury of taking both for granted, but given the choice, how many people on here would pick the phone over the toilet?

It's not an either-or proposition.

In a high population density area, you can (by definition) serve a large number of customers with one cell tower. You can also manufacture basic mobile phones at incredibly low cost.

I'd imagine this costs substantially (orders of magnitude?) less than digging up the ground, running miles of plumbing, buying water from a neighboring utility, etc.

I imagine I would pick the phone over the toilet. Seems like an easy choice.

The phone offers to be a multiplier for my life. Whatever I'm doing, the phone may be able to help me do it better. I can get in touch with experts, find guides and advice, make better plans, etc.

Programmers often talk about how indispensable Stack Overflow has become for programming. Regardless of how necessary it is, it certainly can make you more efficient. The same principle can apply to almost anything.

Looked at it from that perspective, it reminds me of Homer Simpson finding a $20 bill and thinking, "Aww, I wanted a peanut!" His brain replies, "$20 can buy many peanuts!" I think that having a phone could eventually let me buy a toilet, but having a toilet doesn't particularly help me buy a phone.

Of course, I say all of this from my first-world house where both the phones and the toilets outnumber the inhabitants by roughly 2:1, so I could be way off.

I don't think it's really either-or.

Sanitation is essential and helps avoid disease. Connection to the outside world can be essential as well, to trade, contact family, and perhaps even be safe depending on region.

Seems most cultures have to go thru a "dirty" phase to go from 3rd to 1st world conditions. Considering the now-and-soon benefits, it's easy to ignore the costs of disposal decades/generations hence.

Helps that it's a sealed box. Stick it on a truck and haul it away somewhere suitable, or even just leave it buried where it is - the contents are not going anywhere, it should just sit there and be warm forever.

The answer is going to be different based on size and the general sketch of the system, so you might want to be more specific (a 3 day battery bank will cost a lot compared to no battery bank, capacity to run a washing machine will be very different than capacity for lighting and small appliances, and so on).

(I don't know much regarding the prices...)